


South Side Supremes

by literaryempress



Series: Max and Isaac's Infinite Storybook [5]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Blood and Violence, Death, Family, Family Drama, Family Fluff, Family Issues, Guilt, Gun Violence, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Ice Powers, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Invisibility, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Manipulation, Minor Character Death, Prison, Supernatural Elements, Telekinesis, World Domination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 03:40:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5275127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryempress/pseuds/literaryempress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's not one way to define normality. Hell, Ian and Mickey let the meaning of it slip through their minds as they discover their sons' superpowers surface themselves. They have no idea on how the boys' powers - or even Ian and Mickey's own powers, for that matter - came about in the first place. Regardless, they decide to put them into good use when they realize Max's abilities are being used against the entire human race as they know it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Super Clueless

**Author's Note:**

> I have too many ideas for stories lately. This one specifically took a while to put together because I have no skill in writing superhero stories (the only knowledge I have is that from the Batman universe [Gotham] and a little bit of the Supergirl/Superman universe). Okay, and maybe the Frozen movie, too (not really a superhero story compared to the other ones, but I had to use some of the knowledge from there to put into this), but you know...
> 
> And since I'm still working on LTMH, I'm testing the waters and giving this story ten chapters. I don't want to drag it out too long or anything and forget about my deaf!Mickey fic, either.

Ian and Mickey didn’t come from normal families in a sense that neither the Gallaghers nor the Milkoviches have achieved the American Dream type of lifestyle that many in society wish to have. In retrospect, neither Ian nor Mickey have a normal family now, not even after they’ve married and had two kids of their own.

The married couple were once teenagers within two different households. They didn’t turn out to be like the average teenage boy, but somehow, they found normality in their relationship. A bunch of hurdles got in their way, like Mickey’s homophobic father and Ian’s dispute with both of his parents, but the duo overcame them. All of that tragic stuff was behind them now that they had a house and a family of their own.

A year passed since Ian and Mickey got married, and they decided to have their first child. They found a lucky blonde on the North Side whom Ian had met on the job who would be willing to carry their now oldest son, Max. He possessed all of the features his father had: a galaxy of freckles on his face; a sea of green retinas; skin as bright as snow; a head of bright, red hair…

Other than the physical features, Max was a more unusual child. Every infant is unique, but Max had something about him that neither Ian nor Mickey had seen in any kid in their lifetime.

The first time they realized this was when Ian tucked the little boy in for bed. Ian would usually sing a little song to get him to go to sleep. “Piercing through the dark comes little baby mine,” Ian began. “Tucked in tight all through the night, as the starlight shines. Sleep tight, little baby; the next morning awaits. Here you lay; here, you’re safe for another day.”

Once Ian was one hundred percent sure that Max was asleep, Ian started to tip-toe out of the room. Before he made it to the door, he noticed that a scarlet red light illuminated the far corner of the room where Max’s crib was located. Ian turned around just in time to see that Max’s red locks were lighting up in the darkness of the room. The sight of it sparked Ian’s confusion, and to this day, he wanted to get down to the bottom of it.

Of course, it took a while to convince Mickey that this stuff was even going on; every time Ian tried explaining himself, the raven-haired man would roll his eyes and complain to him. “Ian, have you been fucking drinking again? That shit ain’t even real.”

When Ian first explained to Mickey that something was up with their son, he started to let it go and tell himself that it was either a one-time thing, or maybe Max was just playing with his toys in bed, much to his and Mickey’s knowledge.

However, the phenomenon continued. Sometimes it would happen when neither Ian nor Mickey were looking. And through each and every time it happened, Max would be in a deep sleep, unaware that his locks were constantly dazzling up the room.

* * *

One night, the little guy was up way late at night, crying his head off and nearly waking up all of the neighbors on Ian and Mickey’s block. The couple had been up for the past twenty minutes, literally doing everything in the book that they could find to lure the child back to sleep. It felt hopeless after a while.

“Jesus Christ,” Mickey muttered out, rubbing his hand over his face. “You think he’s teething or something?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Ian responded, checking the inside of Max’s mouth just in case there were any signs of white spots in his little gums.

Mickey groaned once again and let out a yawn as he headed back into the kitchen. “This kid’s making me want a fuckin’ drink.”

Ian gulped, thinking fast of what he could possibly do. He loved Max with all of his heart, and he wanted him to be satisfied with whatever he has. However, Ian was incapable of reading babies’ minds, including Max’s. What else is there for Ian to do? They fed him, shushed him, patted his tiny back in case he had gas, checked his diaper three times – they tried everything.

Or so they thought.

With the crying infant in his arms, Ian sat himself down on the couch and cradled the little guy back and forth. “Come on, pumpkin,” Ian spoke soothingly, running his hand through the tiny, red hairs on Max’s head. “You want Daddy to sing to you again?”

When all Ian received was more wailing from the baby, Ian went to his next instinct and started singing his signature lullaby. “Piercing through the dark comes little baby mine. Tucked in tight all through the night, as the starlight shines. Sleep tight, little baby; the next morning awaits. Here you lay; here, you’re safe for another day.”

Max’s cries eventually got a little quieter, his green eyes training up towards Ian’s. The older redhead wiped the tears off his little cheeks and watched as Max started to calm down a little more.

“Mickey,” Ian called to his husband in the other room, “I did it.”

The raven-haired man walked back into the room and looked between Ian and Max in utter confusion. “You did that?”

“Yeah, I sung to him, and –“

“What the fuck?”

Ian furrowed his eyebrows at Mickey, nearly scolding him. “Mick, he’s a baby. You can’t be saying that stuff around –“

“Ian, look.”

Both pairs of eyes were now on Max’s little head as his baby hairs started glowing in the dim living room. They got a little brighter once Max started closing his eyes and dozing off into his slumber. Ian timidly brought one of his hands up to the child’s head, feeling the little strands as they shimmered in the darkness. Some of them tingled against Ian’s touch, a feeling that he hadn’t recognized before.

Mickey rounded the couch and sat next to Ian, placing his hand in Max’s hair and felt the sensation flow through his fingertips. “What the hell is this?” he asked out of shock.

“I have no idea,” Ian told Mickey. “He’s done this a while back, and it only happened when I put him to bed.”

The whole idea was a mystery to Ian and Mickey, some foreign wonder that they never witnessed or experienced before. Was it some kind of condition Max had? Was he born with it? Would it cause any harm to him in the near future? Ian and Mickey weren’t exactly sure. He looked fine; he was fast asleep, and his health was intact. So why was he even doing such things? Did Max even know about it himself?

* * *

Years passed since Ian and Mickey’s discovery. This routine with Max’s glowing hair continued as usual. Between then and now, Ian and Mickey decided to have another baby boy. Unlike Max, Isaac – Mickey’s baby boy – was brought into the world without any unknown conditions of the sort. Every day and night Ian and Mickey would feed, dress, bathe, change, and care for the little guy, nothing unusual seemed to happen.

Or so they thought.

Winter in Chicago was treacherous. The first snow fall seemed like the most stressful. Billions of snowflakes danced from the clouds to the ground, and many people without cars had a hard time walking through it and getting to their destinations. Some people couldn’t get to their destination at all, with the freezing weather having serious effects on their vehicles, in addition to many of the CTA vehicles on the road going at a painfully slow pace.

Mickey took the car to work today, so Ian, Max, and Isaac were left taking the buses and trains to the nearest grocery store – which wasn’t really _near_ at all, but rather a few miles away from their home.

“Dad, I’m cold.” Max whined as his gloved hand gripped onto Ian’s. The older redhead had a four-year-old Isaac in his left arm, trying to get a good idea of where he was while nearly chilling to the bone himself.

“I know, kiddo,” Ian replied, letting out an exasperated exhale. “We can try and warm up on the bus, if we can catch one in time.”

The trio continued towards the nearest bus stop. To their disappointment, the next bus wouldn’t be coming for another twenty-five minutes, and they were forced to wait for one in the disastrous Chicago snow.

Max piled up some snow on the ground by his feet, making a tiny little base for a mini snowman. Isaac eventually caught on to what Max was doing, wiggling in Ian’s arm and reaching his hand towards Max. “You wanna play a little, buddy?” Ian cooed to the child before setting him down on his feet. Isaac immediately joined Max on the sidewalk, grabbing a chunk full of snow to put on top of the snowman’s body. “We can’t stay long, kids. We still have to catch the bus.”

Both Max and Isaac worked together to make the second part of the snowman’s body while Ian sent a text message to Mickey, telling him that they would be late getting home due to the weather conditions. Five minutes later, Ian could already hear Max angrily shouting at Isaac.

“Isaac, you’re ruining the snowman,” Max barked, pointing at the jumbled up snow right next to them.

“I was putting the snow on top of it like you said,” Isaac argued back.

“No. You ruined it. Now the snowman’s body is messed up!”

Ian intervened, pushing the two kids away from each other. “Hey, hey, hey,” Ian began, “what’s going on here?”

“Isaac can’t do anything right.”

“Yes I can!”

“No, you can’t!”

“Yes I can!”

This continued for a good fifteen seconds, and Ian tried his best to calm them both down. Before he knew it, Max grabbed a stray rock from the sidewalk and threw it at Isaac’s arm, causing the toddler to frown and let out angry tears. That was when Ian pulled Max to the side and hit him on the arm. “Max!” Ian shouted, disappointed in his kids for acting this way in public. “What did Dad and I say about throwing things at other people?”

“He started it,” Max argued, folding his arms in front of his chest and looking away from Ian, a frown on his own face.

Isaac was still crying his eyes out, looking down at the rock Max threw in his direction. He stared at it for a good few minutes, his sad frown stuck on his face, and watched as the rock formed clear ice around the clunk of minerals. He didn’t even notice Ian speaking to him in a soft tone until he felt his arm being grabbed.

When he was turned to face Ian, a concerned and surprised look appeared on his father’s face. Ian looked between Isaac and the ice-covered rock on the ground, bewildered as to what Isaac even did.

“Isaac,” Ian whispered to the little boy in front of him. “Baby, did – did you do that?”

Isaac was now quiet. He angrily wiped the wet tears off his own cheeks and shrugged, already wanting to go home and rest everything off. Ian, however, had other ideas.

* * *

“He looks fine to me, Mr. Gallagher,” the pediatrician told the redhead after checking both of Isaac’s eyes with a light. She placed the device on the counter before turning back to Ian, who was sitting beside a worn-out Max beside him. Sensing the confusion in Ian’s facial expressions, the pediatrician took her notepad and pen out, preparing herself to write while looking ahead at the father and his oldest son. “So…you’re saying that both of your sons experience some…abnormalities?”

Ian shrugged, feeling helpless. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “Mickey and I saw something like this going on with Max since he was a baby, but we thought it wouldn’t be something that was _that_ serious.” Max looked up at Ian, oblivious to what was even going on. “And then this morning, we were going to the grocery store, Max and Isaac got into a fight, and before I knew it…”

Saying it out loud to someone other than Mickey was harder on Ian than he expected. Ian didn’t want people to believe that he was some sort of idiot or that he was just seeing things, but he couldn’t help it. Both of his kids seemed to have some weird power that Ian didn’t expect for them to have. It couldn’t have come from Ian or Mickey; they both grew up normally like any other kid.

The pediatrician continued writing some of her notes down on her notepad before placing it down and turning back towards Ian. “I’m not sure if there really is a way I can help you on this, Mr. Gallagher,” she responded, much to Ian’s disappointment. “There isn’t anything that either Max or Isaac are indicating that’s wrong with them, and from what I’ve tried to gather from my equipment here, I can’t seem to find it myself.”

Ian was stumped. Not even a professional with a degree could figure out what was going on with his kids. It sounded like a sign for Ian to just give up on this hunt for answers, but he really wanted to get an understanding on how Max and Isaac ended up like this.

“I do believe, Mr. Gallagher, that there are reasons for everything,” the pediatrician continued, “but this is one of those things that can’t be detected through the naked eye. It could possibly be overlooked, but I’m just not receiving any results here. However, if something happens to either one of them in the future, please bring them here, and we can try to get to the bottom of it.”

While that didn’t give Ian the answers he needed, he took the woman’s words into consideration. Max and Isaac didn’t look sick or anything, but Ian wasn’t going to take any risks.

On their way out of the hospital, Max tugged lightly on Ian’s arm. “Daddy,” he spoke, a little worried. “Is there something wrong with us?”

The worst part about all of this was the fact that Ian wasn’t sure if…whatever this even was is necessarily _wrong_ or not. He didn’t know where it came from or why it was happening to both of his kids. He could just ask the kids to repeat what they’ve been doing this entire time and get some professional to look more into it, but Ian sometimes worried about what they would end up doing to them. All of the tests and things like that just didn’t seem worth it when it came down to it.

Ian placed a hand on top of Max’s cotton-covered head and shook his own head. “Nah, buddy,” he replied, leading the kids back out into the cold. “Everything’s fine.”

* * *

Both Max and Isaac were tucked in for bed, and once Ian was certain that they were sound asleep, Ian headed back into the master bedroom to get under the covers with Mickey. The couple was extremely worn out from the day they had, but Ian still had pressing matters he had to get across to his husband while they were on his mind.

Once Ian was laying on his left side, Mickey reached a hand over and caressed Ian’s face, feeling his eyes getting a little heavier as the warmth of the blankets overtook his energy. He scooted towards the redhead and placed a long kiss on Ian’s lips, which Ian reciprocated with tongue. They were like that for a couple of minutes before Ian released them, shooting Mickey a smirk. “Someone’s eager.”

Mickey matched Ian’s smirk, playing with the tiny strands of hair on Ian’s head. “I need a fuckin’ stress reliever, man. I can’t look at another chart, or else I’m gonna blow my own head off.”

Ian chuckled in response. “Just proves that my husband is a very hard worker.” He had a seductive tone in his voice that ultimately made Mickey’s own dick twitch. They were both sleepy as hell, but the day Mickey turned down Ian giving it to him in their mattress is the day that he might as well give up trying to get out of bed.

But Mickey and his husband have two little boys, and Mickey will be damned if they don’t have someone to properly care for them like they already do.

Mickey inched an eyebrow on his forehead as one of his hands caressed Ian’s side, his fingers ghosting underneath his undershirt and rubbing over the muscles of Ian’s chest. “Is that right?” he challenged, and the two pressed their lips against each other’s once again. Mickey’s tongue licked Ian’s bottom lip, and they both got a kick out of that. Ian’s lips were so soft, like a baby’s butt almost, and Ian could literally feel fireworks exploding in his stomach when Mickey did little things like that. Goddamn fucker.

After a couple more seconds, Mickey sat up on the bed, his mouth still on Ian’s, and brought a leg to the other side of Ian’s body. He was now straddling Ian’s lap, rubbing their erections against each other and creating more friction and body heat. It wasn’t until Mickey started kissing Ian’s neck that the redhead started to speak again.

“Mickey,” Ian spoke, breaking out of the seductive tone momentarily. “We need to talk about the kids.”

The dark-haired man placed a wet kiss against Ian’s jaw before releasing him, just for a second, and saying, “not while I’m sucking on you, Ian.” Mickey went back to coming in contact with the same skin on Ian’s neck that he was kissing previously, leaving a nice, dark hickey there.

“I know,” Ian replied, realizing how horny Mickey was getting. “It’s just…”

He didn’t continue, which confused Mickey a bit, making him sit up and get a better look at his husband below him. “The fuck you on, Ian?”

Ian looked up at the man above him and sighed. He didn’t want to worry Mickey at all, because the last thing Ian wants to worry about is whether he would get upset about anything related to them or the kids.

However, Ian couldn’t believe the reality he was in right now. Max’s hair lit up for no reason, and Isaac was freezing everything he saw with his own eyes. No human in the world could easily do that type of stuff, unless they were born into families of magicians or some voodoo shit like that. Ian and Mickey’s families were normal, yet not that normal, like every other family was, so that couldn’t be it.

“Something happened today.” Ian started, easing into the conversation as carefully as he could.

Too bad Mickey’s reaction wasn’t what Ian was expecting. “Wait, what?” he asked, suddenly concerned. “Ian, did you fucking do something?”

“No,” Ian replied, bringing his hands up to grab Mickey’s wrists in an attempt to calm him down. His thumb caressed Mickey’s hand, jumbling a bunch of words in his head in an order he thought Mickey would try to understand. “You remember the thing with Max…and how his hair would light up when we put him to sleep?”

Mickey frowned for a moment, bewildered as to where this was going, until a realization hit him like a ton of bricks. “You don’t mean –“

Ian nodded. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat and said, “I think we might have something similar going on with Isaac.”

The information itself was hard for Mickey to process. First Ian’s biological son is experiencing some supernatural shit, and now Mickey’s was? Does this type of thing only happen to Ian and Mickey’s family? Were they supposed to be cursed like this for life? “What did he do?”

Ian looked down and bit his bottom lip for a second, replaying the series of events in his head. “Max and Isaac were playing in the snow, and the two of them got into a fight. After Max threw a stray rock at Isaac, the little guy was crying. I was scolding Max about it and then turned around…”

Mickey’s frown deepened into Ian’s brief pause. “And?”

Ian pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed the rest of his face with his right hand. “The rock was…freezing.”

Mickey’s frown fell, and he just deadpanned his husband. “You’re not shitting with me right?” Ian looked up at the sound of Mickey’s tone changing in his voice. “It’s the wintertime, Ian. Rocks do that.”

“No, Mickey. You don’t get it. It turned into a fucking Popsicle within ten seconds, and all Isaac had to do was stare directly at it.”

Mickey was silent. His face was unreadable, and Ian could slightly feel his heart beating in his throat. “How does that shit even happen?” he finally spoke. “I don’t remember putting ice cubes in his fucking bottle when he was a baby.”

“Exactly,” Ian agreed. “I even took them to the hospital to check and see –“

“You brought ‘em to the fucking hospital?” Mickey asked with a frown on his face.

“I wasn’t sure what to do, Mick. How do you ask someone how two kids ended up getting random powers out of nowhere? I needed answers.”

“Yeah, and now everyone’s gonna look at us like we’re fucking stupid.”

The two were silent as Mickey ran a hand through his face, stress creeping up on him automatically. Neither one of them knew what to do. There was nothing they could do to stop it nor was there any information on how this all started. It absolutely didn’t make any sense.

“I don’t want us getting worked up about this shit,” Mickey confessed after their moment of silence.

Ian nodded back. “Me neither.”

Mickey’s hand reached over to Ian’s neck, his thumb gently rubbing Ian’s jaw to comfort him. “If no one out there knows what’s up with our kids, then what does it really matter?” The man paused, shrugging awkwardly with his left shoulder. “If you ask me, that makes ‘em fucking special.”

Ian let out a simplistic smile. Mickey was never a man of words, but when it came to moments like these, Ian felt like he was watching the best screenplay come to life on his own clothed lap.

A couple of seconds passed before Mickey leaned down and kissed Ian on his lips again. Their kisses eventually got a little harder, the hunger creeping up on them and becoming as evident as ever. Just like that, all of the confusion and stress about their kids was long out of the air.

“Papa, Daddy!” They both heard Isaac’s small voice on the other side of the door.

Mickey quietly groaned, rolling back to his side of the bed, and Ian laughed in response. The door slowly opened, and a raven-haired toddler started walking through the door, clutching onto a stuffed Spiderman doll. “I had a nightmare.”

Ian sat up and reached his hands out for the little kid, picking him up and getting a closer look at his frightened features. “At least you didn’t wet yourself this time,” he joked for a moment, looking down at Isaac’s dry onesie. He gave Isaac a hug and kissed the top of his little head before settling him in between him and Mickey.

Mickey looked into Isaac’s little eyes and chuckled. “Those stupid monsters won’t leave you alone, eh?” Isaac shook his head and snuggled closer into Mickey’s body. The older man laughed and kissed Isaac on the forehead. “You pee before you went to bed, right?” Isaac nodded. “Good. I ain’t having all of that in our bed sheets tonight.”

Ian giggled at the two before turning the lights out and snuggling in with two of his favorite boys in front of him.


	2. Super What?

Ian was looking after the kids at the house for the day while Mickey went out to the bank to retrieve some more of his money to pay for gas for the car. Today seemed a little busier than usual, even if the bank wasn’t necessarily full. Regardless, Mickey still had to wait in line behind about six different customers, which was one thing he tried to avoid every time he came.

Mickey’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket, and he checked the caller ID shown on the screen. A photo of Ian and the boys with green Christmas sweaters on appeared, and Mickey caught himself grinning from ear to ear. Ian insisted on taking family photos this past Christmas, much to Mickey’s reluctance. Milkoviches never did the Christmas card thing like other families probably did, and Mickey honestly felt a little awkward even considering them this year with Ian, Max, and Isaac. But it was the first official, traditional thing all four of them decided on as a family, and Mickey wanted his two sons to have as much fun and excitement while they were still young, innocent, and carefree.

Mickey pressed the green button on his screen and brought the phone up to his ear, automatically noticing Max’s obnoxious laughs in the background. “Ian?” he spoke, trying to pick up Ian’s voice from the sounds of cartoons playing on their living room television.

“Someone missed you this morning,” Ian replied with a smirk on his face as he bounced Isaac in one arm. Mickey didn’t even have to ask who it was the moment he heard Isaac’s high voice nearby, assuming that Ian was tending to the little guy after he woke up from his deep sleep.

Mickey smiled as Isaac’s small voice rang through his ears. “Papa!”

“Mornin’, peanut.” Mickey got a kick out of calling Isaac _peanut_. He was the youngest of his and Ian’s two children, and a part of him wished he could stay that way forever; unfortunately, not everything lasts for so long.

Isaac wiped his eye and tried to keep himself awake as Ian held his phone up to the toddler’s ear. “When did you leave?” he asked, his whole body feeling extremely weak and his eyes half-closed even after he slept for almost half of the morning.

“Papa went to the bank, kiddo,” Mickey responded, taking a couple of steps forward as the line got a little bit shorter. “He’s gonna get some money and then come back with enough to get you more fruit snacks. Would you like that?”

Isaac nodded. “Uh huh.” There was a beat in the conversation before the raven-haired child asked, “are you coming back home?”

Mickey’s heart was swollen for the little guy. It was understandable that he was closer to him than to Ian since a piece of Mickey was put forth to create the little child on the other line. Isaac also notices when one or both of his parents have left him for whatever reason. On some days, it doesn’t go too well, and either Ian or Mickey would have to rush to Isaac’s aid and comfort him until all of the tears were off his face, some of them dissolving into his skin. Eventually, though, when Isaac got comfortable in either Mickey’s or Ian’s strong arms, it would be as if he never cried the whole day.

Mickey’s answer was a little bit delayed since he was still in line for his money, which was back to moving at an annoyingly slow rate. “It’ll be a little while, peanut,” he replied as sincerely as possible, “but I’m coming back home. I promise.” When he heard a little moan escape Isaac’s lips, Mickey chuckled. “Love you, kiddo.”

“Love you, Papa.”

“Alright, give me a kiss.” He heard Isaac exaggerate a big, cheek-smacking kiss on the other line and smiled. “Later, bud.”

Isaac handed the phone back to Ian, who bid Mickey a quick thank you and a farewell before they both hung up and went back to tending to their duties. Once Mickey put his phone back into his pocket, he heard a masculine voice behind him. “Little ones, huh?” The shorter man turned his head and spotted a man with a burgundy beanie and black scruff on his face.

“My four-year-old,” Mickey explained.

“Married?”

“Yeah.”

The man nodded. “Good shit.” Mickey silently agreed. Everything about Ian, Max, and Isaac was more than good, actually – it was the fucking best. Mickey wouldn’t have traded this life for another one if he was given the chance. He couldn’t possibly make that type of decision.

A couple more people moved ahead of Mickey, and before he even knew it, he was the first person in the line. The man behind him was taking stock of the area around him before he sparked up a conversation between him and Mickey once again, much to the latter’s uncomfort. “You got a smoke?” When he saw Mickey turn around with a look of confusion and disbelief, the man made a move to clarify. “I ran out before I came here. For stress and shit, you know.”

Mickey nodded awkwardly before searching his coat pocket for his box of Malboro. However, before he got the chance to open said box and hand him a cigarette, he felt a cold, hard object against the temple of his head. That was the moment when Mickey’s heart stopped beating at the familiar device poking at the side of his head.

“Wallet. Cellphone. Now.” He heard the man lowly say in his ear.

Mickey hadn’t been robbed before – and if he did, he probably beat the shit out of the guy before he got a chance to escape his sight. Mickey could see the frantic people look at the stranger with wide eyes as he shouted, “everybody, get down on the ground with your hands in the air!” Everyone but Mickey and the stranger moved, and Mickey was this close to pissing himself in front of everyone in the room.

The shorter man’s head slightly turned, catching sight of the man holding the gun. He was focused on a couple of employees across the room, taking his aim of the gun off of Mickey for a brief moment to aim it at the woman in the navy dress suit, who flinched at the sight of the device and started falling to the ground.

Mickey shook his head in anger. This wasn’t going to be the day he got robbed. No one fucked with Mickey Milkovich, and he could be a changed man with two kids and a husband, or he could be the same teenage boy from all those years ago who lived underneath his father’s roof. Either way, literally anyone would be fucked to mess with him.

He wasn’t exactly sure what made him do it, but Mickey caught himself swinging his arm, punching the stranger in the face and making him drop his gun. The stranger, surprised by the sudden self defense, turned towards Mickey with deepening frown marks on his forehead and started to throw punches in his direction. Mickey ducked one of them in favor of punching the fucker in his stomach, knocking out a bit of oxygen out of him at a time.

At one point, the stranger punched Mickey directly in the nose, sending the man down to the ground. Mickey’s nose was bleeding from the contact, but that didn’t stop him from getting up and continuing to fight that son of a bitch.

The stranger was reaching for his gun when Mickey kicked the gun out of the way and then kicked the guy’s arm. The scruffy gentleman stood back up and brought his hands to Mickey’s neck, attempting to choke him. Mickey wiggled under the man’s touch, trying to free himself before he ultimately choked to death, but the man’s grip was incredibly strong. Mickey even attempted to throw a punch in his direction, but he couldn’t get the man’s hands off of him.

Just when Mickey thought all hope was lost, he felt a tingle go through his body, and before he knew it, he was seeing literal waves in the air. Everywhere Mickey looked, it was like the atmosphere was drowning in heat waves; however, the temperature of the room was still the same as it was when Mickey walked in the room. Mickey started feeling strange, like he stepped in a whole different realm from his actual reality.

He could still see the people in the bank, though – as normal as they were when Mickey first spotted them, too. The stranger’s eyebrows furrowed when he looked at the general direction Mickey was just standing in. Mickey looked around and noticed that other people had the same matching shocked faces. All eyes appeared to be on Mickey, but then there were some individuals in the room looking around as if Mickey had left the room.

But he didn’t leave the room; he was still fucking there.

_Why the fuck are they all looking at me like that?_

Mickey himself felt confused, uncomfortable, and scared at the same time. People were wondering where he went, and it made himself wonder if he was even still here or not. He could see them, but everyone else is looking like a bunch of dumb asses.

That’s when Mickey came up with an idea. He knew he was still standing there and that he could still see the robber in front of him. He also knew that the robber could no longer see him, oblivious to the fact that Mickey was still in the room.

This had to work, or Mickey was gonna be in deep shit.

Mickey threw a punch at the man in front of him, and he held both of his hands up, rubbing at the sore spot on his nose. Then he threw a couple more punches: one to the chest, one to the stomach, and one at his temple. All of them were unexpected, according to the stranger, and that left Mickey silently chuckling at this progression.

The shorter man rounded the robber and kicked him in the stomach, sending him flying to the ground where Mickey continued to jab the guy in his hairy fucking face. More blood and bruises appeared on his face, and Mickey didn’t stop until he was wincing and holding himself as gently as possible.

When Mickey grabbed the gun on the floor a couple of steps away, all of the air waves Mickey was seeing disappeared. Several gasps and whispers followed, signaling that everyone was able to see Mickey again. He was holding the gun with both hands and aiming it at the man on the ground, keeping his eyes on him as his nostrils flared up.

“Don’t you fucking move.” Mickey ordered, not flinching once when the man started struggling to get up.

Two policemen walked over to the stranger, one of them handcuffing him, and the other one keeping his own gun aimed in his direction. The metal rings were secured tightly against the stranger’s wrists as the trio made their way out of the bank and towards the cop car outside.

Once the man was gone, Mickey took a moment to breathe, lowering the man’s gun and placing it on the little desk by the tiny garbage dispenser. He walked up to retrieve his payment when one of the employees walked up to him. It was the same woman who almost got a bullet pierced through her pretty, little skull.

“I…I want to thank you,” she told Mickey, folding her hands in front of her. “You saved all of us.”

Mickey never got this much praise from anyone that wasn’t a member in his family in a while. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to take it at first, especially being that he didn’t intend on magically disappearing under everyone’s noses just to get a guy arrested. It still creeped him out knowing that he could perform such an act.

“It’s no problem,” Mickey responded, shrugging on one side.

The lady nodded, leaving a beat in the conversation. “I wanted to know…” she began, “how were you able to do that?”

Mickey knew what _that_ meant: going invisible, beating someone without them realizing you’re still there, controlling it all. It was the first time Mickey was able to do something like that; he didn’t even think it could happen to anyone, much less himself. But it did, and it really messed with Mickey’s mind.

“Honestly,” Mickey told the employee, still in a trance at the recent events that just took place, “I really don’t know.”

* * *

“You did what?”

Mickey told Ian everything once he got home. He told him about the creepy guy who might have overheard his conversation with Isaac over the phone. He told him about the awkwardness Mickey experienced when he was in line with that guy. He told about the smoke thing, which led to the man holding an actual fucking gun in his direction. He told him about the fight Mickey started with him. He told him about fighting a guy who didn’t know he was standing right in front of him. He told Ian about the people in the bank continuously thanking him for his good deeds.

Everything was out there on the table – everything. But even with all of that, Ian still couldn’t decide on whether Mickey was telling the truth or not.

“It was fucking insane, man,” Mickey sighed. “It was all so unexpected and twisted and shit. I thought someone shot me in the head for a moment or that I was turning into a psycho, but other people were seeing it too.” He paused and gave Ian a shrug. “Well, they really couldn’t, but still –“

“You risked your life back there, Mick,” Ian told him with those damn sad puppy eyes. “You could have gotten shot, and not in the ass or in the leg like you used to.”

Mickey placed both of his hands on Ian’s face. “I’m alive, Ian.” He attempted to calm him down. “No one shot me. I’m fine.”

“You got a bloody nose.”

“What’s a couple of tissues and cold water can’t fix?”

“It could have been worse.”

Mickey sighed, running a hand over his face. “Are we really gonna sit here and talk about my safety when I literally told your ass that I turned invisible and saved a whole fucking bank from losing their money? Hell, it got me a thirty-dollar bonus.” He took a twenty and a ten out of his pocket and waved it in Ian’s direction. “We could probably save it for vacations or getting the kids some more toys or some shit like that.”

Ian stared back at his husband as if he was trying to comprehend the thoughts running in his head. Mickey was telling the truth about all of this. He was actually saying all of this in words; it wasn’t some type of fucked-up fairy tale they would tell Isaac and Max before they headed straight to bed. Ian almost couldn’t believe that he was believing that this shit was real. First it happened with Max, then Isaac, and then Mickey. It almost made him wonder if he had any powers, too.

The redhead turned his head around and took notice of the two kids sitting in front of the television. Ian and Mickey had made them watch a couple episodes of _Arthur_ and made sure that the volume was high enough so they won’t overhear their fathers’ conversations.

When Ian thought about it, though, he wanted the kids to know about how much these new changes were going to affect their lives completely. They’re too young to understand how they got them or how they can control them, but it was better to teach them now than later.

Ian turned back to Mickey and gulped a little, uncertain as to what their next move should be. “What are we gonna about all of this then?” he asked Mickey, looking to his husband for answers. “We’re not a normal family anymore, Mick.”

Mickey scoffed. “Like we were a normal family before –“

“We _were_. We were a normal family before we found out about what Max could do, and now, as far as I can tell, I’m surprised people consider us as humans.”

“Quit overreacting, man. It ain’t like we were born on Jupiter or some shit.”

“I know, but…” Ian sighed. “Things are quickly changing for us, Mickey, and I’m not talking about growing up from those little, scared, scrawny teenagers we used to be to what we are now.”

Mickey held his index finger up in his direction. “Um, correction: _you_ were the scrawny teenager – and not even fucking little, either.”

Ian deadpanned in Mickey’s direction as the raven-haired man laughed. That alone brought a smile to Ian. “So what does that make you, the scared one?”

“Fuck off.” Mickey’s response didn’t bite, though, for his cheeks blushed a bright, light-red color, making Ian chuckle some more.

Their laughter subsided, and now Mickey was the one looking back at Isaac and Max, watching as the youngest child played with his stuffed Arthur doll, matching the movements of the toy with the movements of the cartoon on the screen. “So what are we gonna tell them then?”

Ian followed Mickey’s gaze. He spotted Max laughing in delight at a facial expression Buster Baxter made once he appeared on the TV screen. “I don’t know.”

* * *

Moments later, the television was turned off in favor of a family intervention. Max sat on the left side of the couch, and Isaac sat on the right side. Ian and Mickey stood in front of them, nervously eyeing each pair of youthful, perplexed eyes. Mickey caught himself scratching his own skin at the anxiety building up in his own chest. Discussing this with the entire family felt weirder than he thought previously, and he wanted Isaac and Max to go back to worrying about their toys getting into some kind of mortal combat bullshit or whether or not their favorite shows would be on the next day.

This was going to affect them, too, though, and he might as well get the information into their heads before something were to happen to them.

“So, you guys…” Ian began, folding his hands in front of him, “we wanted to talk to you guys about something that’s been…” He paused. “Well, going on between us –“

“Daddy, are you and Papa fighting?” Isaac asked, a saddened look on his face.

Mickey snickered, kneeling down to place a hand on his son’s little head. “No, son. It’s nothing like that. Daddy and I love each other too much to fight.” Behind him, Ian could feel his heart swell at the words Mickey gave to the little child.

“Are we in trouble?” Max asked, confused and worried at the same time.

“You guys are definitely not in trouble,” Ian answered.

Mickey got back up on his feet and looked between Max and Isaac before taking a huge sigh. “Max, do you remember when, um…when we told you about the time we started…seeing some things when you were a baby?” Max nodded, though he was still a bit confused. “Do you know if they’re still happening?”

Max shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Would you sometimes see the room light up when you eyes would get a little droopy?” Ian asked, curious.

That was when Max dug deep into his own thoughts and memories. “Um…” he started, “I think there was an orange light that one time we watched movies late at night, but I thought it came from one of the lamps at first, or from my imagination.”

Ian and Mickey both nodded, keeping quiet as they attempted to put two and two together. Still nothing.

“What about you, buddy?” Mickey asked Isaac, who was clutching onto his Arthur doll. “Remember that day Daddy and Max saw you freezing the rock outside?”

Isaac nodded. “Yeah.”

“Has it happened again since then?” The youngest boy shook his head, leaving Mickey to scratch the bottom of his chin.

“Is something wrong with us?” Max asked, picking at the skin on his thumb. Seeing Max’s face at that moment dropped a bomb inside of Ian’s chest. These kinds of things were too big for a seven-year-old to worry about. All Ian and Mickey wanted was for him and Isaac to have a normal life. With all of these alterations, however, normality didn’t seem like it was even existent anymore.

“You guys are fine,” Ian explained as calmly as possible before sighing once more. “It’s just…well, Papa and I have been talking it over and…” He glanced from Max to Isaac and back. “It’s safe to say that we have…super powers.”

No one spoke for the next couple of seconds, and Mickey could feel the hairs standing up on the back of his neck at the uncomfortable sort of tension in the room at the official news.

“Super powers?” Max asked, a bit more fascinated than neither Ian nor Mickey expected.

“Like how Spiderman shoots webs at people?” Isaac asked, still hugging his doll with both of his arms.

“Yeah, baby, like that.” Ian explained softly. “Well, we really only know yours, your brother's, and your papa’s powers, for now –“

“Papa has powers, too?” Max asked, surprise written all over his face.

Ian looked over at Mickey, who sheepishly looked away from his three men in the room, feeling himself get smaller when he heard Ian’s chuckles. “I think it’s time for a demonstration, Mick.” Ian told his husband, which sparked up a couple of cheers from the kids.

“Do the super power, Papa!” Isaac asked, bouncing in his seat.

“Yeah, Papa. Do it.”

Mickey looked back at Ian and the kids and chuckled, kneeling back down and facing the kids, both of them with innocent facial expressions. “Alright, alright,” he stated, trying to calm them down a bit. He took a moment to breathe before looking at them once again. “I want you two to close your eyes, and don’t open them until I say when.”

Isaac sat the Arthur doll next to him on the couch so he could use both hands to cover his eyes. His older brother did the same.

Once Mickey knew that their eyes were covered, he attempted at the same trick he tried at the bank. The waves of invisibility appeared before his very eyes, and he checked around him one more time. Both Isaac and Max had their eyes covered, but Ian had a shocked expression all over his face. Mickey smirked and marked off _creeping the shit out of his Gallagher_ on his list of life goals.

“Alright, open ‘em back up.” Mickey told the kids, and within a split second, their hands were taken off their faces as they looked around the room, confused as to what just happened.

“Papa!” Isaac called, a little bit more worried. “Where did you go, Papa?”

“I don’t see him.” Max spoke, perplexed.

Mickey gave them another three seconds before he walked over to Isaac’s side of the couch and grabbed his Arthur doll, waving it in the air. The moment he saw it, Isaac started to scream. “Ah! My doll is moving!” Behind Mickey, Ian was trying his hardest not to laugh since his son looked like he was on the verge of crying, but he couldn’t help but think about how ridiculous his husband was being.

“Hey, hey,” Mickey whispered to Isaac, shushing him to calm him down. “Baby, it’s me. I’m right here.”

Isaac’s crying subsided for a little bit, and his breathing got back to normal. “Really?”

At that moment, Mickey went back to deep concentration, the invisibility waves slowly disappearing from view as he stared directly into his kids’ eyes. Isaac flinched back into Max when Mickey’s physical self reappeared before his very eyes. “See? I’m fine, bud. It’s just what I can do.”

Mickey sat in between Max and Isaac, putting the latter on his lap and rubbing his back for comfort. Max turned to Ian and asked, “Daddy, do you have super powers, too?”

Ian shrugged. “Honestly, Max,” he replied, “I don’t know if I have any just yet, or what power I would specifically have. We can find out later on, though, alright?” Max nodded understandably. “But right now, we want to focus on making sure you guys know what’s going on, alright? I don’t want anyone knowing this much about you just yet. If we’re going to have these things, we might as well put them into good use, right?”

Max and Isaac looked between Ian and Mickey before looking at each other. Finally, they both looked at Ian and said, “yes, Daddy.”

This was Ian’s and his family’s chance to do right with the world, even if the world would take a decade to decide if their powers were real or not. Not all superheros perfected their skills the moment they were introduced in comic books and movies, either, especially not Max and Isaac since they were only little children, and Ian and Mickey were just new to this in general.

They had to start somewhere, and Ian decided that now should be the right time to train.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would have finished this earlier, but the laziness that overcame me during Thanksgiving break and the new spoilers that came out for Shameless kinda got to me. Plus, I went out with some friends on Saturday, too. But other than that, yay, they're doing good with their superpowers. But there's still more on the way - and yes, by more, I mean trouble (but I won't indicate what chapter; you'll find out eventually).


	3. Super Training

“Have you really tried everything, Mick?” Ian asked, staring down at the top of Max’s head.

Mickey nodded. “Yep.”

It had been about a week and a half since Ian and Mickey started training the kids on their superpowers. So far, the only thing they were able to accomplish was getting Isaac to freeze ice cubes without putting the container in the freezer in the kitchen. They researched every possible power in the book – well, Ian did most of the researching – and tried getting Max to do some kind of exercises and all that good stuff to find his strong parts. Sadly, they came up short.

Max sat in his chair, glancing between Ian and Mickey, a little let down that he didn’t get the powers Mickey and his younger brother had.

“His hair still lights up, though, so something has to trigger that.” Mickey added, gesturing towards Max’s head, leaving Ian to scratch his chin in deep thought.

“Son,” Ian spoke to the seven-year-old, “can you close your eyes for me?”

Max did as he was told, waiting for possibly anything to happen. After a minute or two, nothing seemed to be happening.

“What’s that gonna prove, Ian?” Mickey asked.

“Usually when he closes his eyes, his hair starts lighting up around that time.”

“Yeah, when we’re putting him to bed.”

“So…he has to be sleepy or something to make it effective.”

The two men thought about it for a couple of seconds before they looked back down at their redheaded son. Max opened his eyes and looked up at his two fathers again.

“Hey Max,” Ian spoke to the boy softly, “how about we get you in the bed and see if it’ll work then, huh?”

“But I’m not tired.” Max replied.

“You have enough covers on your bed to warm you up a bit and get you feeling a little drowsy. Papa and I just want to check and see if things are still going normally, and you can either stay in bed, if you want to, or play with your toys while we get back to training Isaac. Sound good?”

It took a little bit of thinking to provide his father with an answer, but eventually, Max reluctantly nodded, following Ian and Mickey into his bedroom. These past fews days were really exhausting and disappointing for him, for he started feeling useless in the pursuit to find his own power. Mickey and Isaac realized theirs and know how to control it. Meanwhile, Max did literally everything Ian and Mickey told him to, yet he didn’t know how to spark his own power up or to even stop it when it occurred.

The seven-year-old climbed under his Superman bed sheets and got as warm as he possibly could. Mickey sat in the chair by Max’s desk, and Ian stood beside the bed, keeping his eyes on Max. “Alright, buddy,” he told him, “I want you to try to close your eyes again, and don’t focus on too much. You hear?”

Max nodded slowly before closing both of his eyelids. A couple of seconds past, and he already felt awkward as hell. “Can I open them now, Daddy?”

“Not yet, Max,” Mickey spoke from a distance. “Daddy wants you to get sleepy for it to work, but we can’t do anything yet if you’re still awake. You understand?”

“Okay.”

Ian and Mickey stayed in the room for about fifteen minutes until they were sure that Max had fallen to sleep. Unfortunately, his hair didn’t light up as they expected it to before.

The older redhead scratched the back of his neck, looking down at his son, confused. “It had been working all this time,” he told Mickey, who was running his hand over his mouth. “Is there something we’re doing wrong?”

“How should I know, man?” Mickey asked, getting a little restless himself. “I’m new to this stuff just as much as you are.”

Before they could come up with another solution, they both heard Isaac skip in the room. “Papa, Daddy!” the younger boy called, prompting Ian and Mickey hold an index finger over their lips.

“You gotta be quiet, bud.” Mickey whispered to him, extending his arms so he could pick up the four-year-old and put him on his lap. “Your brother’s sleeping.”

Isaac hugged Mickey with one arm as he watched his older brother’s chest rise and fall peacefully. After a moment, he glanced back up at his father. “Papa,” he whispered, “do we get to play today?”

“You wanna keep practicing?”

Isaac nodded. “Yeah.”

Mickey rubbed the toddler’s back before picking him up as he stood. “Alright, but we can’t do it in here, alright?” The little toddler nodded as Mickey kissed his temple, carrying him out of Max’s room and into the living room, leaving Ian to investigate his sleeping child.

* * *

“Excellent.”

Ian’s, Mickey’s, Max’s, and Isaac’s movements were being recorded on surveillance cameras that had been installed outside of their home: two of them focused on the kids’ bedroom windows; one focused on Ian and Mickey’s bedroom window; one attached to one of the light poles on the sidewalk, getting almost a perfect view of the living room; and one somewhere in the backyard. The four-person household were very oblivious to the fact that they, specifically, were being watched.

A heavyset man with a beer gut sat beside a fitter, blonde man in a dress shirt. A dark brunette-haired woman stood behind the two, her arms folded in front of her as she took in the sight. The trio noticed every detail, from Ian rubbing Max’s little arm and watching him doze off to Mickey sitting beside Isaac and watching him freeze ice cubes with his eyes.

“That’s that Ian Gallagher kid you were talking about, right?” the blonde – identified as Floyd Douglas on his ID card – asked the man next to him, a little taken aback by the youngest son’s chilly little lasers.

The heavyset man took a flask from underneath the table and screwed it open, taking a sip for himself before turning his attention towards the man next to him. “The one with the tiny fucker in the living room is my son.”

The woman’s eyebrows inched on her forehead. “Mickey Milkovich, right?”

Terry nearly scowled at that name every now and then. He couldn’t even bring himself to answer because the sound of his son’s name out of someone’s mouth could easily make his stomach turn. “Don’t fuckin’ call him that no more,” he muttered out, aggressively wiping his mouth free of the access alcohol that got on his lips. “He ain’t a Milkovich; he’s a fuckin’ pussy.”

The woman glanced from the side of Terry’s head to the surveillance screen. The youngest son, Isaac, seemed to have done something right for Mickey to pick him up and hug him close. “He doesn’t seem like the little badass people make him out to be,” she agreed, scratching the bottom of her chin as she observed the scene.

Terry groaned. “He was gonna be everything. He had the Milkovich blood in him. That small little shit was gonna be the best thing this family ever had. He definitely had potential to be my successor once I’ve kicked the bucket.” He paused as his eyes fell upon Ian on another screen. “Now he’s another one of those AIDS-carryin’ housewives, livin’ with a redheaded faggot.”

There was a lot of bite in Terry Milkovich’s words; the woman standing behind him almost flinched at the sound of them. She’s not one to judge, though; she, Floyd, and their entire family has been through a similar situation. Unlike the Milkoviches, though, the Douglas family was more civil about it. However, that didn’t make the situation any lighter.

Natalie Douglas has a younger sister named Talia. Now around twenty-three years of age and living on her own since high school, Talia has faced just as rough challenges with her homosexuality as Mickey has.

Talia was seventeen when she came out as a lesbian. For years, she always left the house late at night to visit a classmate from school named Esther to hide out in her brother’s treehouse to make out and talk about family matters. Of course, since they were in Chicago, albeit on the North Side, being anything but straight in a neighborhood full of homophobes and stuck-up individuals brainwashed in political views was the last thing a lesbian woman could do to survive.

Thanksgiving rolled around, and Talia wanted to invite Esther to dinner. Of course, no one in Talia’s family knew that she was actually Talia’s girlfriend, so they had to keep in under wraps as long as they could. It wasn’t until Natalie caught her younger sister giving Esther a small kiss on the lips in the bathroom that she had no idea who her sister even was anymore.

Eventually, the whole family found out about their little affair, thanks to Mrs. Douglas overhearing the banter between the two sisters, which led to almost an hour-long debate about homosexuality, religion, and family values with the rest of the household and the guests there. Natalie and Talia’s father threatened to send Talia away to either bording school so she won’t have to see Esther again, or send her to a straight camp to get her brain under control. Talia refused both, prompting Mr. Douglas to kick her youngest daughter out of the house.

That was the last time Talia was under their roof.

All these years, Natalie thought she would miss her sister since they did everything together since they were toddlers. Now, though, Talia only wanted to interact with her girlfriend, leaving the sisterly bond they had behind. Since that Thanksgiving, Natalie has had a strong hatred against the homosexual community. It was creating conflict between her own family, specifically removing Talia from it.

So when Natalie was introduced to Terry Milkovich by her formerly imprisoned cousin, Stan Stewards, and was informed about a possible plan to ruin his son’s family with this plan he concocted, Natalie couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

The three got together and contacted Floyd Douglas, Natalie’s older brother and the family expert in surveillance and technology, and Julius Stewards, another one of Natalie’s cousins and a specialist in making drugs. After growling and punching at his sons for information on Mickey’s whereabouts, Terry found the location of Ian and Mickey’s new home, where Floyd hooked up the surveillance cameras to get a good eye on them.

From all of the footage they gathered, it was learned that Ian and Mickey were wanting a baby, much to Terry’s annoyance and reluctance. However, it did give Terry an idea. With all of this hatred he expressed for his son and Ian, Terry wanted to show the world just how toxic their relationship really was.

At one point, Julius created a new drug that no one has ever heard of, testing it on a couple of lab rats to check its effectiveness. The drug, which Julius dubbed as MM4, was meant to activate the neurons in the human brain and spontaneously initiate mind control. At the same time, the rats he tested started glowing in the process, their once gray hairs beaming a shade brighter than their actual hair color.

Julius only found out about how it affected other people around the world once this drug was tested. News reports would come on every day and night, revealing cellphone images of people from different locations around the world frozen in time with bright, orange light in their eyes. It would last for a couple of seconds before said individual would commit the most heinous of crimes – from robbing the closest bank to killing a whole class of elementary school students.

For the longest time, Julius kept MM4 under wraps while creating an antidote for it that would reverse the mind control. He also created a third drug that would grant immunity to MM4, just in case he or one of his family members would end up getting possessed by the new, disastrous phenomenon. When Natalie, Floyd, and Stan all came to him about the Milkovich situation, he was almost against it considering the damage it has done to random people around the world. At the same time, though, he was loyal to the Douglas’, as they were to him, which was why he didn’t back down from a challenge.

Meanwhile, Natalie and Terry, with Floyd’s assistance, kept tabs on Ian and Mickey, who were both scouting out a clinic to find women who were interested in carrying their baby. Once they were certain where Ian and Mickey were going, Terry sent Natalie to them to go through the surrogate mother process. Nine months later, Max Gallagher was welcomed into the world.

For a price, anyway.

Julius came to the hospital when Natalie gave birth to the baby. When the doctors weren’t looking, Julius gave Max the drug, much to the child’s cries of pain, before he got caught. Finally, Natalie handed Ian and Mickey their first child, smiling with so much joy and happiness as the redheaded baby spotted their parents for the first time.

Terry was ecstatic about their accomplishment. It didn’t even matter whether or not Ian and Mickey wanted and had a second kid because their first one would be the first human ground zero to destroy humanity as they all knew it.

And here they were, watching with disgust and hidden glee at the sight of Ian and Mickey not knowing what the literal fuck to do with their oldest child’s abilities.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about them, Mr. Milkovich,” Natalie assured the grumpy man as she observed Max crawling out of bed and following his father into the living room with Mickey and Isaac. “They’re clueless amateurs. It’ll take until the end of the world for them to realize what chaos their family will truly cause.”

Terry grumbled, smiling around the open flask in his mouth. “Ain’t nobody gonna fuckin’ know what hit ‘em.”

Floyd nodded in agreement before turning around towards Terry and his sister. “Though we’re gonna have to ask Julius for one of the antidotes.”

Natalie frowned. “What do you mean?”

Floyd cocked an eyebrow at his younger sister, aiming a thumb at Terry next to him. “For him. He’s with us now, Nat. He gets the immunity power, too. We had a deal.”

This was true. Natalie, Floyd, and Julius had agreed to give Terry some of the immunity drugs for him and his sons sans Mickey in addition to carrying out the plan. If this plan went their way throughout, then they, along with Terry Milkovich, would have control over the entire world. Julius would mainly have all the credit for creating the drugs for it, Stan would have credit for coming up with the idea in the first place, and Terry would gain credit for using his son and his family as their victims.

After a moment of pondering, Natalie nodded towards her brother before exiting the room to find Julius, leaving Floyd and Terry to continue watching Ian and Mickey’s movements. Moments passed before Terry grew sick and tired of watching the never-ending domesticity before inviting Floyd out for a drink.

* * *

“I want you to keep focus on the water. Can you do that for me, bud?” Mickey asked Isaac while holding onto a water hose in his right hand. When he received a nod from his son, Mickey created a distance between the two, preparing to let the water out. He gave Ian a thumbs up, prompting Ian to turn on the water from the side of the house.

Mickey aimed the hose so the water would shoot high enough for Isaac to get a better look. Isaac kept his eyes on the shooting water for a couple of moments, and the water began to turn into a large icicle. That’s when Ian turned the water off and Mickey dropped the hose on the ground.

“Nice job, muffin.” Ian cheered for Isaac, picking him up and holding him in his arms.

Mickey stared down the thick ice that was currently laying on a blanket of snow. “Jesus,” he muttered, kneeling down to break the ice away from the end of the hose. “The little guy’s getting better.”

Max slowly walked over to his family from the back porch, watching sadly as Ian and Mickey broke the ice into smaller pieces. He wanted to have real powers like Mickey and Isaac did, but they tried for days without really accomplishing anything.

Ian looked up at his son, noticing the melancholy look he gave to the patch of snow in front of him on the ground. He stepped to the side for a moment, wrapping both of his arms around Max’s little body. “I know this really sucks, son. Believe me, I wish there was a way to control all of this.”

Max stood still, allowing Ian to rub circles on his back. “Why can’t I do cool stuff like Isaac and Papa can?” he asked sadly.

Ian kissed Max on the temple. “I think you just need a little patience, that’s all. Sure, your brother and your father found out what their powers are, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t find yours. It’s like the conversation we had about teaching you and Isaac how to speak. It takes a different amount of time with each of you.”

Mickey chuckled as he stood upright, picking Isaac up off the ground. “I swear, before the two of you started speaking real words, I wanted to clock one of you in the head for blabbering random sounds and stuff throughout the house,” he replied, his eyes focusing on Isaac, who was now giggling in the crook of Mickey’s neck.

Ian smirked. “Come on, Mick. They’re just kids.”

“Like hell they are,” Mickey responded. “They were little toothless demons before now.”

Isaac lifted his head off of Mickey’s shoulder and pointed a finger at him. “Daddy, Papa said the H-word again.”

“And he called us demons!” Max exclaimed.

Mickey inched an eyebrow at both of the kids. “You haven’t seen a demon yet. I can secretly turn into one and bite both of you two’s toes off.” At that, both kids screamed, causing Mickey to chase Max around the backyard. Isaac eventually got out of Mickey’s hold, following Max as their father ran around and goofed off with them like he always did.

And, of course, Ian always watched the sight, laughing every time Mickey growled at them before speaking like he was some kind of fictional character.

The older redhead walked back into the house, preparing to get lunch ready for his family. Before he could get comfortable again and toss his coat on the couch, he overheard someone yelling from outside. He thought it was Mickey or one of the kids, but this noise was too close to the front of the house. Plus, it was a female voice in very deep distress.

So Ian went outside again to investigate it. His eyes bugged out of their sockets when he noticed the scene in front of him. Two teenage girls were laying down in the center of the street. One of them had a bloody wound to the waist while the other one cradled her in her arms, crying out for any source of help. The alleged criminal behind all of this was nowhere to be found.

Ian ran over to the girls, observing the mess in front of him. The wound in one of the girls didn’t seem like a bullet wound, for there wasn’t a circular hole in her shirt, so gun violence could be ruled out.

The uninjured blonde girl cried as she looked up at Ian. “He’s gonna kill us,” she muttered out.

“Who is?” Ian asked, kneeling down to observe the severity of the wound under her clothes. There was a long, deep cut in her waist, making Ian wince at the sight of it.

“My stepfather,” the blonde cried desperately. “H-h-he was drunk, a-a-and he got mad at us, and –“

Ian shushed her calmly, placing a hand on her shoulder for comfort. “Listen to me,” he spoke softly, pointing towards the still-open front door of his home. “You see that door?” The girl nodded. “That’s my house. There’s a phone on the coffee table in front of the couch. I want you to call 9-1-1 and tell them what’s happening.”

“What about Lindsey?” the girl asked, gesturing down to the girl crying in pain below her.

“I’m taking her to the hospital. You have to trust me on –“

Before Ian could finish his sentence, the three of them heard a deep, masculine voice from down the street behind them. Ian turned his head and noticed a man without a coat around his upper body and red bruise marks around his neck. He started to speed walk towards the three, and the blonde began to panic.

“Hurry, get in the house now.” Ian warned, and the girl was up and running inside. Ian looked down at Lindsey, the brunette girl still bleeding out. “I want you to keep your eyes open, Lindsey. You hear me?” The girl nodded slowly, although the effort to follow Ian’s orders was a struggle on her part, for the pain continued to overtake her body.

Ian grabbed the girl as carefully as he could, keeping his arms around her and getting a steady grip as he started to run down the street and away from the approaching man behind him. Anxiety came upon Ian as he continued to run, occasionally looking down and making sure Lindsey was still awake.

More energy started to build up in Ian’s body somewhere. Ian didn’t know what it was, but he kept on running. Before he knew it, he ran through about three different neighborhoods within ten minutes. He kept on going, Lindsey still in his arms as he tried to navigate the nearest hospital with his mind. He and Mickey would often take Isaac and Max there for their check-ups and stuff like that, so it shouldn’t be too hard.

A few minutes later, Ian arrived in the hospital parking lot. He looked down at Lindsey, taking note of her eyes slowly closing. “Lindsey!” he called to her, shaking her hand a bit. “Stay with me, alright? We’re at the hospital.” Ian wanted to get this girl to safety just as much as he wanted her to stay alive. The cut in her waist looked very deep, and he didn’t want her dying on his watch.

So Ian ran though the hospital doors, not losing an ounce of energy as he did. “I need help! Somebody!” Ian called, and a group of doctors came up to him with a cot to place Lindsey down on. They all took the girl’s weak body as carefully as they could, resting her on the little bed as they checked her.

A doctor walked up to Ian and asked, “what have we got here?”

Ian felt himself stuttering as he explained the story. “S-she was with her friend, and the friend’s stepfather got drunk and stabbed her. She needs help, sir. Please.” Ian was nearly begging him here. He got Lindsey here as fast as he could, much to Ian’s own surprise, and all he wanted was to get her back on her feet again.

Moments later, the group of doctors wheeled her into one of the hospital rooms, leaving Ian to stand there covered in some of Lindsey’s blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still have another final to take tomorrow (well, it's not like a test or anything; I just have a presentation to do and an essay to turn in), but I felt like it was time to update this story. In other news, I aced one of my classes and got a good grade on the final as well, which I am very proud of. And I'll also be starting break soon, so I'll get to write more for you guys. ;)


	4. Super Inversion

“Ay, Ian!” Mickey called throughout the house as he came from the backyard. Max and Isaac followed him, the two kids covered in snow from the little snowball fight they had with their father.

When Mickey walked into the dining room, he kept his eyes ahead as he noticed a teenage girl staring back at him. Fear spread throughout her features, and to Mickey, she looked like a deer in headlights directly on the road ahead. “Who the hell are you?” the raven-haired man asked in confusion.

Max looked between Mickey and the unknown girl on the other side of the room. “Papa, who is that?”

The teenage girl stuttered. “I-I’m so sorry. M-my best friend…she – we were –“

“Alright, okay,” Mickey interrupted, walking closer to her. “Calm down. Tell me slowly what happened.”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t have time.”

“What, the feds come after you or something?”

“N-no, not them.”

Before the two could continue their conversation, they heard loud bangs on the front door. The girl yelped, and Max and Isaac screamed, running through the house to the archway that lead to their bedrooms. A man’s voice boomed through the living room area. “The fuck you got my daughter in there for, huh?”

“Fuck,” Mickey muttered under his breath.

The teenage girl started to cry. “I just need to call the police. I won’t waste your time after that. Just –“

Mickey placed his hands on the girl’s upper arms to attempt to calm her down. However, that didn’t stop the two from hearing the man’s voice on the other side of the front door. “You got ten seconds to open this damn door, or I’m breaking it the fuck down! You hear me?”

Mickey frowned, turning away from the girl to face the front door. “Ay, put a hole in my door, and I’ll bust your fuckin’ face open!”

“The fuck did you say?”

The girl started to panic again, and Mickey quickly turned back to her, starting to panic himself. “Alright, listen to me,” he whispered to her, and she paid as much attention as she could. “I’m gonna help you, but you have to stay close to me and don’t let go of my hand.” When the girl shook her head in confusion, Mickey just grabbed her left hand with his right, guiding her to the children’s room. “Come with me.”

Mickey led the girl into Max’s room, where the two kids were on the bed, hugging each other and looking towards the bedroom entrance in fear. “Boys,” Mickey spoke to both Isaac and Max, his hand still firmly gripping onto the girl’s. “Come over here. Hold Papa’s hand, okay?”

Max jumped off the bed and ran towards Mickey, with Isaac following suit. Mickey grabbed Max’s hand and Isaac grabbed Max’s. There was now a chain between Mickey, his sons, and the teenage girl.

“I’m gonna do something,” Mickey explained to the girl, warning her in advance. “It’s gonna be fuckin’ trippy, so don’t freak out or anything.” The girl nodded. “And don’t speak; he might hear you.”

All of a sudden, all four of them heard glass shatter in the other room. Isaac started to cry but stopped when his father shushed him. “You gotta be quiet,” Mickey whispered to the youngest child, and Isaac nodded, standing closer to his older brother. That was when Mickey went back into deep concentration. All four individuals in the room started to fade away seconds before the man walked in Max’s room.

Mickey, Isaac, Max, and the teenage girl stood against the wall, watching the man’s movements. Mickey frowned at his blood-stained shirt and the knife in his hand. He really hoped and prayed that the bastard didn’t get any on Max’s bed spread.

All of a sudden, Max let out a sneeze. Mickey and the teenage girl tensed up automatically and watched as the man turned facing them, sensing someone in the room that he couldn’t see. Max tried everything he could not to let go of either his brother’s hand or Mickey’s hand, but he really had to blow his nose.

He tugged on Mickey’s hand, gesturing towards the bedroom entrance, and Mickey mouthed, “not yet, Max.”

The man kept looking at the wall, oblivious to the fact that Mickey, his kids, and the teenage girl were still there. “Who’s there?” he called, walking from one side of Max’s bed to the other.

Isaac was standing awfully close to the man – so close that the man’s leg brushed up against the toddler’s now invisible arm. The man’s eyes bugged out of their sockets before he turned his head, revealing everything in their normal locations. “The fuck’s over here?”

The little boy’s whimper was suddenly heard by everyone in the room. Mickey turned his head between his kids and the man stalking Max’s bedroom. He had to get them out.

Isaac looked up at the man, who was staring down towards the floor. Ironically, his eyes were on Isaac’s, but he couldn’t see them. The concept of it scared Isaac. Another whimper escaped his mouth, and Mickey had to give Isaac a warning glare. That only lasted a second, though, for the man’s hand started to lower near his son’s head, and that’s when Mickey’s protective instincts came in.

A finger ran against Isaac’s hair, still invisible to the man in question, and Isaac whined in protest. The man frowned, realizing what was really going on, and made a move to grab Isaac’s arm – wherever it was.

When he got a firm grip onto something that resembled a child’s arm, Isaac began to scream. “Papa!” Isaac suddenly came into view, leaving the other three under Mickey’s invisible shit.

“Shit,” Mickey let out, causing the man to look in Mickey’s general direction. “Go, go!” At that, Mickey released Max and the teen’s hands, the latter two running out of the bedroom, leaving Mickey to deal with the man who placed his hand on his son’s arm.

The knife was still in the man’s hand, and he was threatening to place it on Isaac’s arm. Mickey wasn’t having it, though. “Leave my boy the fuck alone,” Mickey barked, anger showing throughout his face. When the man didn’t make a move to let Isaac go, Mickey threw a punch at the guy, sending him back a bit.

“Isaac, go with your brother! Go!” Mickey warned, and soon enough, the little boy was out of the room.

Mickey went invisible once again, continuously punching the guy in the face, in the gut, in the chest – anywhere so he would be weak enough until the cops showed up to take him away. He could faintly hear the teen girl in the living room again, contacting 9-1-1, and that prompted something in the man to fight back.

Even if the man couldn’t see him, he got a good punch in Mickey’s face, catching Mickey offguard for a second. Lucky for Mickey, he maneuvered quick enough for the man to miss him, but grabbed him fast enough so he wouldn’t hurt the girl and Mickey’s kids.

Mickey threw a couple more punches at the man’s face and a kick in between his legs before speed walking over to the other end of Max’s room, grabbing a jump rope that had been hanging off the door of Max’s bedroom closet, tying the man to one of the legs of Max’s bed before reappearing into view.

“That’ll teach you a lesson to fuck with family, especially mine.” Mickey growled at him before exiting the room to check on everyone else. Isaac and Max were hiding behind the couch, and the girl had just hung up the phone.

“They’ll be here in a couple of minutes.”

Mickey nodded before he turned his head towards the living room window. Half of it was broken, and he nearly cursed at himself at the thought of the price to get it repaired.

“Papa.” Mickey heard Isaac cry from behind the couch. The little boy looked like he had been violated in the worst of manners, and it hurt Mickey just seeing something like that.

He rushed over to Isaac, picking him up in his arms and holding him very close. “Hey, baby.” He whispered to the little boy, bouncing him in his arms before kissing him on the cheek. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Mickey asked, looking the child in his bright, blue eyes.

Isaac’s eyes were really wet, which angered Mickey greatly. This fucker was going to pay for making his son cry like that. “He squeezed my arm, Papa.”

Mickey grabbed Isaac’s right arm and rubbed it as smoothly as possible. “I’m sorry, baby,” he cooed, kissing the sore part on Isaac’s arm. “He won’t do that again. Trust me.” Isaac didn’t respond; he just leaned his head against his father’s chest and let the rest of his tears fall against Mickey’s shirt.

The four just stood in the living room, awaiting the cops’ arrival and listening to the man in the other room yell very vulgar things at them. A couple of members of the Chicago Police Department made their way through the front door once Mickey invited them in. When the cops handcuffed the man and brought him out of Max’s room, Mickey kept his free hand against the back of Isaac’s head, comforting him and making sure he wouldn’t see the crazed man verbally attack him.

The man was being dragged out to the police car when the teen girl turned back to Mickey. “Thank you so much,” she spoke in relief.

“It’s no problem,” Mickey replied, his hand rubbing circles on Isaac’s back. He paused for a moment, looking the girl in her eye and remembering their first encounter in the house. “How’d you get in here anyway?” He wanted answers to all of this. He needed some explaining to be done.

The girl gestured out the door towards the middle of the street. “The guy who took my friend to the hospital told me to come here since the door was open.”

Mickey furrowed his eyebrows. Ian? Ian invited the girl in here? That explained why Ian wasn’t in the house with all of them. Still, it was quite unusual that Ian would invite so much drama in their house.

Speaking of Ian, he had to find him. Mickey, in fact, had a bit of explaining to do himself.

“You know which one?”

* * *

“Daddy! Daddy!” Both Max and Isaac entered the waiting area of the hospital, running towards Ian, who was seated near the corner of the room. The older redhead stood up at the sight of his kids, a little bit surprised that Mickey brought them here with him.

Ian allowed Max and Isaac to grab at and hug his legs. “Hey, boys,” he greeted with a chuckle. He was able to reach for Max’s head before he realized that some of Lindsey’s blood was drying on his hands. “Daddy can’t touch you yet; he needs to clean up first.”

Isaac eyed the blood stains at his height. “Daddy, are you hurt?”

“Yeah, Ian, what happened?” Ian heard the sound of Mickey’s voice approaching him. When the redhead looked up, the teen girl from earlier was walking close by.

Ian felt his anxiety go up again as he remembered the almost limp girl he carried all the way to the hospital moments ago. “Mickey, I’m sorry, alright?” he told his husband, walking past the kids to meet up with the raven-haired man in front of him and gesturing towards the blonde girl as he did so. “The girls needed help, and – and the guy, he was –“

“Ay, ay,” Mickey interrupted, backing away from Ian as his eyes trailed over the blood stains on his hands. “Ain’t nothin’ like a little soap and water can’t fix, Bloody Mary.”

Ian sheepishly looked down at his hands and scooted away from Mickey in time, causing his husband to chuckle a bit in response. His little bit of laughter died down, though, when he looked between Ian, the kids, and the teenage girl. “Where is she?”

“She’s resting,” Ian explained, and that seemed to get a sigh of relief out of the teenage girl next to them. “They gave her some stitches, but only family members are allowed to see her.”

“Her mom doesn’t get off work until four,” the blonde girl added, much to Ian’s disappointment, “but I could call her dad and see if he could swing by.”

Mickey ran a hand over his face, suddenly worn out by the day’s work that he and Ian had to put up with. He was actually relieved that he was able to save the blonde and his kids from the rampaging man that came in their house; he just didn’t want every bad person in this world lured into the Gallagher-Milkovich home.

About three minutes later, the girl bid her farewell to Lindsey’s father before hanging up, facing Ian and Mickey with her hands folded. “Thank you both so much,” she told them, applying force into her fingers against her hands out of nervousness. “I don’t know what would I have done if she died.”

“Trust me; I wouldn’t, either,” Ian replied with a chuckle. He looked down at his hands for a moment before looking ahead at the girl. “I’m gonna go wash my hands, actually. I’ll be right back.”

Ian turned around and headed towards the nearest bathroom, leaving Mickey and the teen girl to stay in the waiting area with the kids. When Mickey joined Isaac and Max over by the seating area, Max turned his head towards his father and asked, “Dad, is she going to be okay?”

Mickey plopped down in a seat between Isaac and Max and nodded. “I think she is, kiddo,” he answered. “She just needs some sleep. Her dad will come get her.” Max nodded, though he seemed a little unsure of himself. Mickey expected that out of his seven-year-old son; hell, he would be confused too if he were Max’s age, witnessing some stranger coming in the house with a sociopathic killer on her heels.

“I’m hungry,” Isaac’s little voice broke Mickey’s train of thought.

Mickey turned his head to his biological son, running his fingers in Isaac’s dark hair. “Daddy just has to finish up in the bathroom, and we have to wait until the patient’s father gets here. We can’t leave, um…” Mickey paused, looking up at the blonde two seats away from him.

“Chloe.”

Mickey nodded. “Right, thanks,” he replied before looking down at Isaac. “We can’t leave Chloe here by herself, can we?”

Isaac innocently shook his head, looking down at his lap. “No.”

With another gentle head scratch, Mickey leaned down and kissed Isaac on his head. About two seconds later, he turned towards Max, his eyes bugging out of their sockets.

Max’s hair was lighting up again.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, literally panicking as he searched Max’s coat pocket for his hat. Max looked up at Mickey, confused as to what was going on. “Max,” Mickey whispered to the oldest child, “you have to keep your hat on no matter what, okay?”

“It happened again?” Max asked, and Mickey nodded.

“No one should know about this until –“

“Papa!” Mickey heard his youngest son cry. As he whirled around, he spotted Chloe’s hands around the little boy’s neck, attempting to strangle him to death.

“Hey, what the fuck are you doing?” Mickey called angrily, grabbing at Chloe’s hands to remove them off his child. Chloe’s grip got a little harder, and Isaac found it a little harder to breathe. That was when Mickey stood up and kicked Chloe in the stomach, causing her to lose concentration on her hold against Isaac. The four-year-old scrambled out of his seat, running towards his older brother for comfort as the adults confronted each other.

“The hell is your problem?” Mickey asked, his eyebrows furrowing until the frown marks were deep enough to permanently wrinkle him.

Chloe growled at him before forming the simplest, yet creepiest smile Mickey had ever seen. “What’s the matter?” Her voice was identical to her facial expressions, although not less creepy; it was all innocent and bright like she came directly out of a Sesame Street episode. Mickey’s stomach turned at the sound of it. “It’s fine,” she spoke again, making a failed attempt to calm Mickey down. “I’m just doing God’s work.”

Mickey frowned in confusion as to what the hell she was even talking about. It seemed to catch him off guard really well, too, because it didn’t even take more than three seconds until Chloe’s hand balled up into a fist, which collided directly into Mickey’s nose, sending the older man down to the ground.

Both Max and Isaac cried at the scene, holding each other tightly as Chloe made her way over to them. Lucky for them, Ian came out of the bathroom a second later, finding his husband on the floor with a bloody nose and his youngest son in the hands of a now crazed and homicidal Chloe.

Ian rushed over to Chloe, grabbing Isaac and kicking Chloe in the leg. About three doctors had rushed over to grab the teenage girl while Ian held Isaac close and helped Mickey up to his feet.

“Death to you fucking AIDs-possessing lab rats!” Chloe shouted out of anger as one of the male doctors dragged her away. At one point, she tried to kick Ian in the back, but the doctors had grabbed her legs just in time. “You’re all gonna fucking die, do you hear me?” She continued to scream and shout different vulgarities until one of the doctors injected medicine into her neck, sending her into a deep sleep.

Ian glared at the now limp blonde from afar, hugging Isaac with one arm and holding Mickey up with the other. How she started turning against his family, Ian will never know. It just goes to show that not all people are as trustworthy as one makes them out to be.

The redhead was definitely keeping that as a reminder for next time.

* * *

“A young woman identified as Chloe Farmiga has been admitted into the Chicago Lakeshore Hospital this evening after a dispute with one of the visitors at the University of Chicago Medical Center earlier this afternoon,” a news reporter spoke, gripping onto her microphone and showing a disappointed look.

Ian came out of the kitchen with a glass of ice and some paper towels, staring ahead at the television. He could see Chloe slowly walking towards Mickey before punching him in the face. Anger began to overtake him as he reached for the remote to turn the television off.

When Ian made it into his and Mickey’s room, his husband was softly touching the bridge of his nose to see if it got any better. Unfortunately, all he got back was a sharp pain that caused him to wince from where he sat on the bed.

“Don’t touch it,” Ian told him, climbing into the bed next to Mickey.

Mickey rolled his eyes. “No problem, mom.”

Ian chuckled a bit, but it didn’t last. He took an ice cube out of the glass and placed it in one of the paper towel sheets, wrapping it up and handing it to Mickey. He watched as his husband gently placed the towel-wrapped ice cube on his nose, wincing again at the pain. Ian hated when Mickey was in pain, and he sure as hell hated it when someone hit him like that, especially when it was the same person that they tried to help.

Mickey removed the ice for a minute to look at Ian, whose eyes had fallen to his lap, his fingers playing around a bit with the fabric from the bed sheet. “You okay man?”

Ian shook his head. He was silent for a couple of moments before making a fist with the same hand that was playing with the bed sheet. “All we did was try and help her,” he began with anger in his voice. He gulped. “We brought her in the house to call the cops on her stepdad, saved her friend from bleeding to death –“

“Um, smart ass, _you_ were the one that did all those things.”

“Admit it, Mick. You would have saved her, too, if you saw the way her friend looked in the street.”

Mickey stayed silent after that, putting the ice back up to his nose. Ian sighed, running a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I just – I don’t –“

“Ian.” The redhead’s stutters ceased. Mickey brought a hand up to Ian’s chin, turning his head around so Mickey could kiss him softly on the lips, putting his husband’s mind at ease for at least a couple of seconds. Ian’s lips captured Mickey’s bottom lip, goosebumps covering his skin at the soft feel. Mickey let out a soft moan as Ian continued to work at his bottom lip, working his hands down Ian’s chest to graze over Ian’s hard-rock abs.

A couple of seconds later, the two men heard cries come from one of the boys’ bedrooms. “Papa!” Isaac’s voice echoed through the hallway.

Mickey sighed, reluctantly getting out of the bed and heading out the door. Ian bit his own bottom lip, his thoughts running back to earlier today when Isaac almost got choked to death. Mickey’s kisses usually did the trick in distracting him, but today, his mind was focused on his little boy.

Isaac was sitting in his bed, clutching onto his Spiderman doll and crying his little heart out. Mickey entered his room, looking down at Isaac’s stained onesie and bed sheets. “Peanut, hey,” Mickey cooed, rushing to his son’s aid. “You wet the bed, man. What did Daddy and I say about drinking before bed?”

Mickey moved the blankets away from Isaac’s legs, looking down at his frightened son. Tears were spread all over his face as he looked up at his father. He didn’t make a move to follow his father to the bathroom; instead, he curled up a bit from where he sat, his bottom lip trembling tremendously.

“Ay,” Mickey whispered to him, kneeling down beside his bed to wipe some of the tears off Isaac’s face. He shushed him a couple of times, kissing his forehead and his cheek in an attempt to calm the kid down. However, the overwhelming day he had overtook every other emotion Isaac possessed.

Ian entered the room moments later, watching the scene from afar. He sighed, feeling bad for what happened to the two of them, and grabbed a dry onesie from Isaac’s bedroom closet. He and Mickey couldn’t have one or both of his kids get hurt. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. If that meant keeping the kids at home away from the drama Ian and Mickey got involved in, so be it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to chat with me about any of my stories, if you wish, on [my Tumblr](http://promqueen-and-hairgel.tumblr.com/), or to just start up any old conversation. I'm available. :)


	5. Super Caution

A week had passed since the Chloe incident. News reports caught her trying to injure doctors and other patients at the hospital she was admitted to, forcing officials to move her to a new location. Meanwhile, Ian couldn’t even think about the damaged teen girl, knowing that she had almost killed his and Mickey’s youngest son while under some kind of weird fucking psychosis or whatever the hell she was on.

Ian and Mickey left the kids with Fiona at the old Gallagher house while the adults went to work. Since Mickey took the car for the day, Ian decided to take the CTA train to his job. Lucky for him, he arrived at the train station about five minutes before the actual train arrived.

There was some dispute occurring on the platform when Ian arrived. Two men – one taller and more muscular than the other one – were shoving each other, yelling a thousand things that Ian barely understood. However, he did overhear that one of the guys – the shorter one – had an affair with the other guy’s girlfriend, and all Ian could do was roll his eyes.

Ian was just about to crane his head to check for the oncoming train when the taller guy had pushed the shorter one on the train tracks. That was when Ian saw familiar lights shining brighter as the vehicle approached.

Shit. 

Everyone was crowded around the area where the man was pushed. Even the taller guy was taken aback by his own actions. Some people were looking at him with anger in their eyes; others were panicking as the train continued to rush down the tracks. The short man on the tracks stood up, clearly in pain from the impact of the fall, his back aching from hitting the tracks so hard.

Ian looked between the shorter man and the train. He didn’t want the man to get hurt. The sign across from him warned him to not step on the tracks, or he would get some kind of electric shock. Saving the man was more important, though. He couldn’t handle another almost-death in the same month.

So Ian took action. He raced on the tracks, grabbing the man on them just as the train was getting closer and closer. People were surprised by how fast Ian was, yet they were also worried about his safety as well as the stranger’s.

“Hold onto me,” Ian warned the man loudly, the trains wheels against the tracks getting louder as it rolled up towards the platform.

The man did as he was told, and within barely a second, thanks to Ian’s speed, Ian got them both off the train just in time. Ian stopped near the middle of the platform, letting the man go and checking him for any serious injuries. The crowd migrated over to Ian, praising him and asking a million questions at a time. It was overwhelming, in a good way.

Ian looked between all of the passengers, trying to find the taller man that pushed the stranger. There were people coming off the CTA train, and neither they nor the individuals who were waiting at the station with Ian looked like him. Ian took this as a hint that he escaped, wanting to get out of trouble. Unfortunately, for him, Ian had a mental image of the guy in his head – sort of – and he was determined to find him.

“Who was the guy that pushed you? Huh?” Ian asked the man below him. “What was he wearing?”

“Brown leather jacket. Black T-Shirt,” the man answered. “Kind of a darker complexion and no head hair.”

“Thanks. Stay safe, man. I’m gonna go find him.” Ian told the man before getting up and running back up the stairs, leaving the stranger in question to stay in his spot with a stunned look on his face.

The redhead kept the description of the culprit in the back of his head as he turned his head from the left to the right, his eyes one hundred percent alert. He thought he saw a man with a leather jacket run out of the glass door, so Ian followed him.

“Hey!” Ian called to him. When the bald man turned his head, he immediately turned away in an attempt to get away from Ian’s line of vision.

Ian started to run after him but almost stopped when he noticed the man pull out a gun from his jacket, aiming it at Ian while he still ran. Ian used his speed to dodge away from the bullet, keeping his eyes on the man who wondered where the hell Ian actually went.

All of a sudden, Ian ran towards the man, swiping the gun out of his hand and pushing him against a brick wall in the process. The man’s hands were held behind his back by Ian’s strong hands. “So I guess you’re a runner, huh?” Ian asked, struggling to keep the man still.

“Let me the fuck go, man! It was an accident!”

Ian ignored the man’s pleas and continued. “I’m a runner, too, you know,” he said. “The only difference between you and me, though, is that you can’t get away from me, especially when you’re out here trying to hurt other people.”

“He and Gina were the ones who started it! They went behind my fuckin’ back!”

“Tell that to the police officers who will be looking at the evidence on the train station’s security cameras,” Ian responded, and he placed the man’s gun in his back pocket, taking the man to the police station using his super speed once again.

* * *

Mickey wasn’t up for bullshit in the morning, yet life seemed to give it to him anyway. What made him decide to take this route to work, he had no idea. Then he remembered that there was construction work being done on the street he usually drives through, so it would actually take him a longer amount of time to get to work. The traffic in the street didn’t seem to make it any better. Mickey hated traffic and usually did everything to avoid it, but today, it didn’t want to get out of his way.

He honked his horn a couple of times at the cars up ahead of him. “Will you fucking go already?” he called out his window. He huffed with much agitation, gripping onto the steering wheel. “Jesus.”

None of the cars in the street made an attempt to move, prompting Mickey to run a hand over his face. He was going to be very late today.

Mickey wanted to get the stress off his mind, so he turned on the radio and tried finding something to listen to. Before he got a chance, though, he overheard some breaking news story that caught his attention.

“Two men were boarding the CTA train this morning on the South Side of Chicago,” a male voice boomed through Mickey’s car. “Apparently, the two of them were arguing over a girl when one of them had pushed the other on the CTA train tracks moments before one of the trains started approaching to the platform. Luckily, one of the passengers had saved him just in time. According to witnesses, he was a tall, redheaded man with a dark coat on who seemed to have acquired super speed.”

Mickey’s eyebrows furrowed at the description, realizing that they were talking about Ian. “Fuck.”

“The same man had left the CTA station and caught the man who pushed the other on the tracks, taking him to police custody, along with the culprit’s gun as evidence. He stated that he was shooting at him but moved away from the oncoming bullets –“

The raven-haired man pinched the bridge of his nose. “Jesus Christ, Ian.”

Some of the cars had moved, much to Mickey’s relief, and he began to drive his car up for the couple of inches that was provided for him. His car was in the middle of the street, along with someone’s navy blue Toyota Camry. Mickey hated being in the intersection of the street like that. One would think that the cars would have handled their shit ahead of him, but they were being pricks like they always were, to him.

Loud screeches were heard, and when Mickey turned his head towards his left, he noticed an oncoming car. It didn’t look like it would stop anytime soon, and the driver appeared to be drunk or on some crazy shit.

There was gonna be a car accident in any minute, and the cars ahead of Mickey were barely moving.

The woman in the car in front of Mickey was rapidly honking her horn, hoping someone would move so she won’t end up as one of the victims. Mickey had to do something. He wanted to get the fuck out of here, but this lady was about to die any minute if he didn’t help her, either.

The car was quickly approaching, and Mickey did the one insane thing he knew he could do.

Mickey jumped out of his car and stood in front of it and the lady’s Toyota Camry. He was in deep concentration mode, creating an invisible shield around himself big enough for the car to not drive past. Lucky for him, the shield worked, and the man’s car collided against the shield but not through it. The driver’s air bags came from out of his steering wheel, and the driver made no move to continue driving. Mickey assumed that he had knocked the guy out of his drunken state or something.

People on the sidewalks and in their cars had observed the scene from where they were, different ranges of shock and relief running through their veins. Mickey himself was relieved as well, his heart pumping rapidly in his chest. He was able to stop a bank robbery and a car crash with his power, and even after two and a half weeks or so of discovering and practicing his invisibility powers, he still couldn’t fucking believe it.

* * *

Fiona missed taking care of younger kids. She missed having a household full of her brothers and sister running around and doing two thousand things at a time. Lip acquired a career once he got out of college, thanks to some convincing from her and Ian; Debbie was getting her life together while settling with her high school sweetheart; Carl was still in college, although he doesn’t know what to do with the rest of his life; and Liam was about to head to high school before Fiona knew it.

It should be a good thing for Fiona to watch her siblings grow up and be more independent, but she still missed them. Things weren’t the same around here anymore without Lip, Ian, Debbie, and Carl sticking around.

When Ian and Mickey started having kids and coming to Fiona in hopes that she was willing to watch them while they went to work, Fiona didn’t pass up the opportunity. Sure, the boys weren’t her siblings, but she loved them just as much. She was willing to play games and watch movies with them for as long as they came over, and it would help revive every nostalgic feeling she’s ever encountered.

It was about four in the evening. Fiona had picked Isaac, Max, and Liam up from school a while ago. Liam was completing some of his homework while Max watched a cartoon on the couch in the living room. Isaac hung around with Fiona and watched her make dinner for the four of them.

“When are Papa and Daddy coming home?” Isaac asked with a pout.

Fiona was checking on the green beans and stirring the contents of the pot of spaghetti together. “They should still be a work, kiddo,” Fiona answered, glancing down at the little boy’s face. “Give ‘em a little more time, and before you know it, they’ll be here to pick you and your brother up.”

Isaac looked down at his shoes. “I miss Papa.”

Normally, Isaac would forget about how much he missed one or both of his parents, too occupied in playing games and stuff with his older brother and his cousin for most of the day. Ian told Fiona what happened the previous week with the girl they were in the hospital with and how she nearly knocked Mickey out and attempted to kill their son.

Fiona sighed, abandoning the food for a minute to kneel down and pick up little Isaac off the ground. She hugged him really close, rubbing his back and peppering him with kisses. “Papa and Daddy are doing everything they can so you guys are safe and sound. I know how much you miss ‘em, but they’ll be back soon enough.”

Somehow, Fiona’s own words seemed to boomerang back to her as she remembered the days in her life she watched her siblings walk out that door. It was rough – and giving her nephew advice about it sounded a little ironic – but Fiona didn’t mind as much. Even as she was teaching a kid something, she found herself learning the same lesson.

Isaac’s head rest against Fiona’s chest, and she continued to cradle him for a little bit before walking in the living room and placing him on the couch. The toddler had then curled up in a ball, hugging his knees close to him and facing the television with wet, tired eyes. Fiona didn’t like the days when one of the boys, mainly Isaac, was feeling that way. It always broke her heart.

Just as Fiona went to check on the food again, there was a knock at the door. Fiona walked through the kitchen to the living room to answer it, and when she opened the door, her younger brother’s face appeared.

“Hey Fiona,” Ian spoke, wrapping one arm around his sister, receiving a kiss on the temple in response.

“Isaac was just thinking about you,” Fiona spoke, inviting Ian into the house. “I just put him on the couch.”

Ian walked towards the back of the couch, and Fiona locked the front door. The aroma of the food from the kitchen reached Ian’s nose. “Something smells good,” he spoke, and Max and Isaac both turned their heads at the sight of their father.

“Daddy! Daddy!” the boys chanted, Isaac running over to Ian with his arms out.

Ian bent down to pick him up, holding Isaac with one arm and hugging Max with the other. “Hey guys,” he greeted with a smile spread on his face. “You have a good day today?” Isaac just latched onto Ian’s neck with his small arms and leaned his head against Ian’s shoulder. “Aw, you missed me, muffin?” Ian looked down at Isaac, noticing the tears he wiped away previously, and kissed him on the cheek.

“I made some food for the kids, but there’s plenty for you and Mickey to take home, if you want.” Fiona walked past the three of them and headed back into the kitchen.

“Thanks, Fi.”

Ian, Max, Isaac, and Liam all entered the kitchen with Fiona to get ready to eat. Ian placed Isaac in one of the chairs at the table before washing his hands at the kitchen sink and setting the table for Fiona. “You all washed your hands?” Ian asked his youngest brother and his sons.

Both Max and Isaac looked over at Liam, and they all down at their hands shortly after. “Uh oh,” Isaac spoke.

Ian giggled. “Come on now. You don’t want germs in your food.” With that, Isaac, Max, and Liam headed upstairs to the hallway bathroom, leaving the adults downstairs. When Ian was done setting the table, he rounded the counter to help Fiona serve the food on the plates.

“Long day?” Fiona asked as she turned around and noticed a yawn escape Ian’s lips.

“Something like that.”

They were silent for a moment. Fiona seemed to be looking down at the tiling on the kitchen floor, processing some thoughts Ian didn’t know were forming in the first place. Ian looked back at her in confusion, suspecting something wrong.

“I was at the store earlier today, getting some groceries and maybe a couple of other supplies for the house,” Fiona began, picking at the hem of her shirt. Ian nodded and continued to listen. “I don’t know, some women on the train were talking about some incident that happened this morning, and I wasn’t sure if it was true or not –“

“Fiona,” Ian spoke in a calm yet concerned voice.

His older sister sighed and looked ahead. “I heard about what you did today. You know, at the train tracks. And then out on the street.”

“You knew it was me?”

“They had your description and everything, Ian,” Fiona replied. “Red hair, dark coat – you’re my brother; I pretty much know all of this about you already. You think I don’t know you and Mickey’s car schedule every week?”

She was right about that.

Fiona took a couple of steps closer to Ian, placing her hands on his shoulders. “You’re a good person, Ian. I’m not doubting that one bit in my body,” she explained, “but you’re still my rock. I don’t know what would have happened if you got shot out there or gotten run over by a train.”

“I’m fast enough; I can get away from one just fine.”

“You know how sensitive I get about this stuff, Ian. And let’s say, in a hypothetical situation, you did get hurt – or maybe even worse. Mickey and those kids are going to be picking up the pieces from all of those, and I don’t want to see your family tearing themselves down from all of this.”

Guilt suddenly overcame Ian’s body. He loved Mickey, Max, and Isaac too much to let them down like that. He’d do anything to make sure they were all happy and safe. At the same time, though, he cared about this city, as much as it was getting old for him. He was born in the South Side – he had South Side in his blood – and that meant he was one of the people meant to protect and care for it as much as his own family. He wanted to do this.

His eyes fell upon Fiona’s as he responded, “I’ll be fine, Fiona. I won’t get hurt. If it becomes too much, I’ll stop when I can.”

Fiona didn’t say anything this time; she just wrapped her arms around Ian’s body, embracing him in a tight hug. When Liam, Max, and Isaac came back downstairs, they released each other and served the rest of the food before digging in.

* * *

“So…acquired super speed, eh?”

Moments after Mickey arrived at the Gallagher house, his husband had finished eating dinner with Fiona and the kids. Fiona had already packed a plate for Mickey to take home with him, which seemed like a good idea after Mickey got a glimpse of his son begging him to take the family home.

So Ian, Mickey, and the kids bid their farewells, giving Fiona hugs and kisses, and soon enough, they were in the car and riding back to the house. Max and Isaac were in the back seat, playing with Isaac’s Spiderman doll, while Ian and Mickey spoke to each other.

“I’m surprised they didn’t catch me the first time.”

“Hospital?”

Ian nodded, and Mickey continued keeping his focus on the road. Not even a minute passed before the latter spoke again. “Some drunken idiot was on the road today.”

The older redhead turned his head in surprise. “Did anyone get hit?”

“How could they? He couldn’t get past me.”

“Mickey, he could have crashed the car, and you –“

Ian frowned a bit deeper when he caught Mickey smiling, doing a terrible job at hiding his laughter. “Why are you laughing? This is serious.”

“You’re really doing a piss poor job at understanding what I’m trying to say here.”

Seconds past as Ian was stuck in his own thoughts. Mickey just rolled his eyes. “I saved people today, too, moron,” Mickey spoke. “You’re not the only one around here that can be Superman, Ian.”

“Papa, you were Superman?” Max asked from the back seat, his jaw dropping at the news.

Ian and Mickey both laughed. “No, Papa’s not Superman,” Ian told the kids with a smile, “but he saved people like he was.”

Isaac clapped his hands together. “Yay!”

Mickey couldn’t hold back his smile if his life depended on it. “Thank you, peanut. Don’t forget Daddy over here, too. He saved a guy from getting run over and got one arrested at the same time.”

“Not at the same time, Mick.”

“With your freckly, roadrunner butt, I’m actually surprised,” Mickey mumbled under his breath, causing Ian to laugh and clutch his belly.

They both stopped their smiles and laughter when they noticed an orange light coming from the back seat. Ian turned his head and noticed Max’s hair lighting up again. “Hey Max, where’s your hat man?”

“My head got itchy,” Max responded before reaching in his pocket for the navy blue hat. Ian reached towards the back seat, making sure all of Max’s strands were covered completely.

When Ian rested his back in the passenger’s seat, he heard Mickey sigh. “When are we ever gonna figure out what to do with that kid?” he asked low enough so Max wouldn’t hear.

Ian just sighed. “I don’t know.”

The car ride was silent for a couple of minutes until Ian turned on the radio, allowing whatever current station to break the silence. What came up next was unexpected to not only Ian and Mickey, but also the kids in the back.

“There was a plane crash here near O’Hare Airport this evening,” a man’s voice spoke. “About more than fifteen passengers on board have died upon police and ambulances’ arrival, in addition to both of the pilots controlling the plane, and more than twenty-five of them are severely injured. One of the flight attendants on board witnessed one of the pilots going under some sort of hypnotic phase. Jessie Sheen, one of the pilots, according to the flight attendant, had an unusual, orange glow in his eyes that lasted for a brief twenty seconds before he got up and strangled the other pilot, George Thomas. Moments after, he and many of the other passengers have crashed on the runway and passed away.”

Ian and Mickey were still in their seats for a couple of seconds before they looked at each other and then at Max through the mirror above their heads.

“Oh God,” Ian muttered out.

Mickey ran a hand over his face as he continued to drive up to the house. He didn’t know how it was even possible, but he knew one thing’s for sure: Max was definitely linked to all of these deaths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoop, another update. There's definitely trouble ahead.


	6. Super Trouble

“Mick, come on. Max is not a murderer,” Ian told his husband, watching him pace back and forth in the living room. The duo had been like this since they heard the news in the car, and pretty much everyone in the Gallagher-Milkovich household started getting worried.

“He’s makin’ other fuckin’ people lose their goddamn minds and killing people,” Mickey explained frantically. “He’s the ground zero of all this shit.”

Ian stood up from the couch and placed his hands on Mickey’s shoulders. “Alright, calm down.” He started softly. “We can figure this out.”

“What’s there to figure out?” Mickey asked, his eyebrows furrowed. “How are we gonna make this all go away? Max could be born with this, Ian, and if that’s the case, then you know there’s only one way we can –“

“Okay, no. We’re not taking out our own son.” Ian interrupted.

“Well, what do you suggest we do then? Other people are gonna eventually find out about all of this, and once it traces back to us, we are all gonna be extremely fucked.”

Ian’s eyes darted between Mickey and the other side of the room that led to the boys’ bedrooms, aware that one of them could hear their conversation. “Could you keep your voice down?” He tried to whisper. “And stop with the fucks. They can hear you.”

Mickey rolled his eyes in response. “You’re acting like cursing is the worst thing that they’re ever gonna do. I mean, Max is practically making people stab random strangers on the street with toothpicks and a pair of scissors here.”

“We’re gonna figure this out,” Ian told him in a calm voice, putting his hands back on Mickey’s shoulders. “We are. We just need to do a little research, maybe figure out how to get rid of this stuff, and everything will go back to normal.”

“Take a look at us, Gallagher,” Mickey spoke, taking Ian aback by the use of his surname. “We’re not normal. Nothing about us is normal. Both of our families are sure as shit not normal. Our kids aren’t normal. Hell, these goddamn super powers aren’t normal, Ian. You see anyone else outrunning cheetahs and blocking themselves from bullets with invisible shields? Nothing about us will ever be as normal as you say it will be.”

“It’ll be normal for us, anyway,” Ian explained. “It doesn’t have to be for everyone else out there. It’s like you said: who gives a shit about anybody else? Why should we even care if anyone thinks we’re normal or not?”

“Because we’re the ones destroying them, Ian. The whole human race as we know it is gonna be wiped out before we know it, all because our seven-year-old son is possessing everyone with his goddamn hair.”

Ian sighed at Mickey’s words. Usually Ian had a lot of hope for the better for most situations, but Mickey was right. Other people would eventually find out what Max could do, and that could easily affect not only the family, but also the people who know them, the people who had loved ones literally possessed by this form of mind control, the people who had loved ones that were murdered in the process – the list goes on and on. And when people find out that Max was the one committing all of this, Ian and Mickey could lose him.

What they would do to him, Ian wasn’t exactly sure, but he didn’t wanna find out.

From the corner of his eye, Ian noticed a little head hide itself behind the archway that led to the bedrooms. However, when he turned around, the figure was gone. He assumed that the children were eavesdropping on the conversation.

“Isaac, Max,” Ian called, making his way over to the other side of the room. Mickey followed, biting down on his bottom lip. “Come on out, guys.”

The kids’ heads sunk when they returned into view. Max, between the two, seemed the most worried about what Ian and Mickey were discussing, and his parents couldn’t blame him. Ian bent down to pick Isaac up off the floor, and Mickey made his way towards Max and ruffled his hair a bit, his mind too distracted by what it could actually do.

Tiny, blue eyes met larger, green ones. Isaac had no idea what was going on, though he knew it was something pretty bad. Ian was worried for him and his older brother. It was kind of strange how Ian, Mickey, and the boys ended up being the ones with these kind of powers. They were selected, out of many other people in the world, to possess abilities to make the world feel safer, yet the eldest son was doing damage to it without even trying anything.

But it wasn’t Max’s fault, though. He didn’t know how to control it, much less even make it start. And how was he to know that he would hurt random people with his abilities anyway?

“Daddy, is something wrong?” Isaac asked, giving Ian a sad facial expression.

The taller redhead rubbed the little boy’s side and glanced between him and Max. “Technically, there is something wrong,” Ian began, “but I don’t want you two to worry about it too much. Papa and I are gonna figure out what this is so we can stop it, alright?” Isaac nodded while Max was disappointed in himself and deep in thought at the same time.

What came out of Max’s mouth next took Ian and Mickey by surprise. “Dad,” he spoke, “is it gonna happen to one of you?”

Mickey ran a hand over his face, and Ian looked down and gulped. Neither one of them had thought about that. What would happen if Max somehow possessed one of them? They were both at an understanding that it would not only ruin the credibility for themselves that everyone recognized, but it would also but the kids in danger.

At this point, protecting the kids, while it was their number one priority, was harder than Ian and Mickey thought.

* * *

“Breaking news from Dallas, Texas,” a male news reporter spoke, worry written all over his face. “A woman identified as Catherine Mueller has shot and killed four of her family members in her own home. She was last seen making her way back to her house when the neighbors reported an orange glow in her eyes. Twenty seconds after it passed, and she had made her way inside and grabbed the shot gun from the basement. Her husband of five years, her sister, her eleven-year-old daughter, and her nine-year-old son were the main victims in the attack.”

Natalie sipped some of the red wine in her glass as she observed the witness interviews on the screen from known neighbors from the Dallas neighborhood. Floyd had entered the nicely-decorated living room and leaned against the archway as he stared at his sister. “That oughta be the third one today,” he spoke, interrupting her thoughts. “And it’s not even noon yet.”

“Sounds like progress, don’t you think?” Natalie asked, tossing some of her hair back as she turned back to the television.

Floyd never expected to be a part of this twisted scheme before Terry Milkovich and his cousin got out of prison. Honestly, when they and Natalie came to him for some assistance, he almost thought against it, his reputation as a Douglas being brought into consideration, along with the possibility of some jail time – hell, maybe even the death penalty, but he wasn’t going to further worry himself about that.

No one knew that the Douglas family had the drug that gave Max his abilities, though, so they were still in the clear. Floyd, though, kept have reoccurring doubts in his head, for some reason, that were telling him that karma was gonna eventually bite him in the ass.

So it wasn’t a surprise when he spoke up to his sister and asked, “you think anyone would find out about this shit?”

Natalie frowned as she turned her head towards her brother. The Douglas family never shied away from a challenge. They were more certain of their actions than people wanted to believe. “The police would need some kind of motive to do a search warrant on the house,” she explained, her voice in monotone. “As far as I can tell, we’re clean as a whistle to them, unless one of them were to be like those damn super gays and pick up some abilities of their own.”

“Well, no shit,” Floyd replied, his hands slapping against the legs of his khakis, “but the rest of the family could get suspicious of what the fuck we’re even doing.”

“We’re doing them a favor,” Natalie said, standing up and facing her brother with her arms folded. “We’re doing mother and father a favor. They raised us right, Floyd. We’re the epitome of the American Dream over here, and that witch –"

“Your sister?” Floyd responded dully.

“She’s not a sister to me anymore, not after what she’s done.”

“You two were literally sleeping in each other’s rooms, braiding each other’s fucking hair, and now –“

“Now she had someone else to share a bedroom with,” Natalie interrupted. She paused, keeping her eyes on her brother from afar. “Unfortunately, for her, we’re not giving her away. None of us under this roof are. She gave herself away. She gave herself to some damn hobo lesbo that stepped foot into our own household, tainting the atmosphere with her misguided views on how the world works.”

Floyd didn’t have much of an opinion on homosexuality. Truth be told, when he was told the plan to help Terry Milkovich concoct some scheme against his youngest son, he didn’t understand why he had a part of this. Sure, he was the tech-savvy member of the family, and Natalie and his cousins needed a way to keep their eyes on Mickey and his family, but he didn’t feel as if he was supposed to be doing it in the first place.

Not only that, but he also missed his younger sister, Talia. She was a radiant ball of sunshine out of Floyd’s siblings. He remembered when the woman didn’t even make the double digits yet, walking into his room whenever there was a thunderstorm and that Natalie wasn’t available. It’s been years since he’s seen her, and all he wanted was to have his family back.

“Our family tree is falling apart,” Natalie said, placing her hands on Floyd’s shoulders once she made it across the room. “You may not see it. Everyone else might not see it. Hell, maybe even mother and father won’t see it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t. We’re not gonna sit here and get brainwashed by what the media wants to spit at us about two women – or God forbid, two _men_ – do behind closed doors.”

Floyd didn’t meet with her eye to eye. When his eyes fell to the ground as he let out a sigh, Natalie brought her hand to his chin so she could lift her head up again. “And think about it,” she continued, “our family was the one that created this ability and made headlines around the world without anyone knowing it was even us. We’re practically taking control of the world here, and that Terry Milkovich man is our ally. We’ll have everything we want at our grasp. _Everything_.”

It sounded half-promising, the whole world domination thing, and Floyd would want nothing more than to feel like he’s leading a pack of wolves than being one of the followers. However, he also seemed as if Natalie, Terry, and everyone else involved in this scheme was making a big deal out of something as small as two guys having kids and sharing each other’s lives. It almost made him feel guilty for being an accomplice.

The two siblings stood in front of each other for a few more seconds before Natalie moved again, walking over to the laptop that was placed on the table against the far wall by the window. “All we need to do to ensure that this plan is gonna work,” she stated, typing something into the Google search engine while doing so, “is to have that little Milkovich, his boy toy, and his little spawns in the right place…at the right time.”

Floyd frowned for a moment, following his sister over to the laptop and looking on with her as she observed Ian and Mickey’s home address from a map of the city. The internet browser took up about forty percent of the page, for Natalie was also looking at the window behind it, displaying one side of the Gallagher-Milkovich home. She placed some headphones on and listened out for any information that she could access, and her brother just stood behind her and watched.

* * *

“More research?” Mickey asked, nearly yawning as he carried Isaac out of the boy’s room and into the dining room. Ian had been hunched over the laptop for the past couple of minutes since he woke up that morning, trying to find any form of remedy that could fix Max’s problem. Unfortunately, he came up short.

“Nothing that could help us,” Ian answered. Mickey just sighed, placing Isaac down in one of the dining room seats. “That girl from the hospital that attacked Isaac is one of the victims, though.”

Mickey frowned, his fists balling at his sides at the mention of Chloe.

“According to this CNN report,” Ian explained, “she was about to get some medication when she freaked out and started assaulting one of the doctors like she did at the last hospital she was sent to.” He squinted at the screen and continued to read. “The security camera caught the day we were in the waiting room, and you can see the way her eyes light up a bit on the screen.”

It didn’t feel real to Mickey. It didn’t feel real that something like that happened when he wasn’t paying any close attention. This shit happened when he had his eyes off Chloe and Isaac for a good three seconds before shit almost hit the fan.

“She has light-up eyes, Daddy?” Isaac asked, leaning closer to Ian so he could get a better look at the internet browser. Unfortunately, Ian had moved the laptop out of the toddler’s reach.

“This is grown-up business, Isaac,” Ian explained, “and I don’t want you to get disturbed by what you see, alright?” The raven-haired boy nodded reluctantly, and he hopped out of his seat and joined Mickey in the kitchen. That was when Max emerged from his room, dressed in his everyday attire. “Mornin’, sport. How did you sleep?” Max didn’t verbally answer. He just shrugged.

Mickey had poured himself a cup of coffee when he looked over at his husband. “Nothin’ for breakfast today?”

Ian shrugged. “I wanted to go out to eat. Max liked the pancake place we went to occasionally, and it would save us something to eat for tomorrow morning.”

Both of the boys grew excited upon hearing the news. “Philly’s Pancake Patties!” Max cheered, and Ian smiled, knowing exactly what would make his son happy.

“Yay!” Isaac cheered, and Mickey laughed at the two before setting his mug down and picking his son back up, adjusting him on his waist and giving him a kiss on the cheek.

“You really want those pancakes, huh?” Isaac nodded, and Mickey thought it was unbelievable how the little guy had so much energy in the morning. “Okay, but you gotta go wash up first.” He carried him all the way to the hallway bathroom. “I ain’t havin’ the employees smell morning breath on you.”

* * *

Philly’s Pancake Patties had its perks. For one, the size of the pancakes were so big; you could get full off of only one. Ian wanted to get the situation with Max resolved, and that meant putting focus into his research. Plus, the kids never got tired of pancakes – they probably got that from Mickey, most likely – and them having leftovers would satisfy them for the rest of the week.

The family of four made it into the restaurant about thirty minutes later, Isaac almost running into the door once the car was parked and everyone was out of it. A nice family of three had helped the little guy in, holding the door for Ian, Mickey, and Max in the process. Once everyone was in, the four found a booth by the window big enough to host their belongings, mainly their coats.

“Good morning,” a waitress stopped by with menus for the four of them to look at. “My name is Alice, and I’ll be your waitress today. Could I start you all off with anything to drink?”

“Just some water,” Ian stated.

“And orange juice,” Max added. Isaac agreed.

Once Alice wrote down her notes on her notepad, she was off to the kitchen, leaving the four by themselves. Ian had pulled out his phone and searched for more information under the restaurant’s WiFi while Isaac played with his stuffed Spiderman doll. A moment later, Mickey had taken notice of what Ian was doing.

“Ian, you don’t wanna give that a rest for a minute?” Mickey asked, gesturing towards the phone.

The redhead didn’t budge. “I wanna figure this stuff out, Mick, before anything happens to him. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

“Okay, I get that,” Mickey agreed, “but just take off for a second, at least. You’re probably starving or some sh –“ He was given a warning glare, and that was when he stopped himself. “Besides, it’s not like anyone knows…” He paused to look around the restaurant for any eavesdroppers before leaning across the table towards Ian. “About him,” he whispered the last part.

“They have the potential to,” Ian spoke softly, though he knew that Max was very well paying attention to the conversation. “I mean, look at him. You can see his hair from a mile away –“

“Damn redheads.” Mickey muttered under his breath, glancing down at his menu and skimming through it to find something to eat.

“I just don’t want anything to happen to him or the rest of us,” Ian stated. “I’m looking out for my family, Mick. Is that a lot to ask for here?”

Deep down, Mickey knew that Ian was right. It was already trouble enough living in the South Side of Chicago, where mischief and damage seemed to emerge left and right. Gang members are all over the city, trying to do anything to get by in the world while, at the same time, taking out the people around them – even the innocent ones. Mickey’s always been absorbed into the tough-guy lifestyle. It was a Milkovich way of getting around.

But he’s not fully a Milkovich anymore; he’s part Milkovich by blood, part Gallagher by marriage. He’s taken a new perspective on life, it seems, and Ian helped him with that especially. Max and Isaac did the same. A shitty South Side life was better than no life at all, and the possibilities of what could happen to Max – or both of the kids, for that matter – are endless. Mickey just wanted one little wish: to make sure his family was protected from any forms of danger and predicaments, and like Ian was implying, it would take a lot of effort to do so.

Moments later, the waitress had returned with the drinks for Ian, Isaac, and Max and started taking everyone’s orders before leaving them be once again. Fifteen seconds barely passed when the four heard gun shots coming from outside, prompting every other customer in the store to panic.

“Daddy?” Max’s voice wavered, immediately covering his hair with the hat when he realized what was going on.

“Shit,” Mickey muttered under his breath as he noticed about four or five people outside with guns in their possession. Ian placed a hand on Max’s back, urging him to duck in case any one of them were to aim at the four through the window. Luckily, though, the culprits were looking in every other direction.

Ian turned towards Mickey, his face completely dosed with fear. “We have to do something,” he told Mickey.

“Like hell we do, Gallagher,” Mickey barked back, a frown on his face at such an idea.

“More people are gonna get killed.”

“Yeah, and so are the kids.”

“Isaac can use his powers.”

“And what about Max? He can’t be out there, Ian. Someone’s gonna shoot him in the face!”

He had a point. As far as Ian and Mickey were concerned, Max didn’t have any super powers, and even if he did, they were doing a bang-up job of figuring out what they are.

Ian turned back towards the window and watched as a man’s car window was busted open by the black gun in a woman’s hand. _More people are gonna get killed_. He didn’t want his sons to die, but he also didn’t want to be selfish, either, and let other people die. They were superheros, for Christ’s sakes.

“What are you doing?” Mickey asked, watching Ian and Max hop out of their seats.

“I’m gonna take care of it,” Ian explained, pushing Max back over to his seat. “Make sure to keep them down, Mick.” Before Mickey had the chance to talk Ian out of this, the redhead had sped out of the restaurant and to the scene outside.

* * *

“Give me your fuckin’ money, grandpa.”

One of the gun owners of the back was a blonde woman, relatively in her mid-30s judging by the stress marks on her face. She had the black hand gun up against a 50-something-year-old’s temple, impatiently waiting for the driver to hand over some cash. The man continued to cry, which was testing the woman’s patience.

“I said give me your fuckin’ money!”

Two seconds passed before the woman had enough. She was about to pull the trigger on him when a sudden flash appeared before her, and the gun in her hand was gone. She looked around with much confusion before she set her eyes on Ian, who stood in front of the set of windows of the restaurant, holding the gun up with his fingers.

“You missing something?” Ian asked with a frown on his face.

She charged for him, and Ian ran off again, her mind tumbling with a billion and one questions. Her head turned towards a couple of other gun owners and she shouted across the street, “find him!”

Mickey was watching the entire thing from inside the diner, keeping Isaac and Max hidden under the table as promised. A truck had pulled up in the restaurant parking lot, and a few more men had about a hundred different weapons, ready to kill the first living thing they could set their eyes on. Mickey felt his heart skip a couple of beats, especially knowing that Ian was out there on his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, this chapter took forever to write because I had so much writer's block, smh. A part of me feels like it's not that good, but I'm not gonna think too negatively on it. At least I was able to update for you guys, and finishing the story is what matters. :)
> 
> This is also the last updated chapter of my WIPs for 2015 (this isn't the last thing I'm writing/updating, though), for it is New Year's Eve, and we are heading into a new year. I honestly hope good things happen in 2016, because 2015 was really rough for me and everyone around me, especially. Season 6 of Shameless will be available online tomorrow, so I'm preparing myself to watch that (though I'm honestly nervous as hell about it, too).
> 
> I hope everyone has a wonderful new year. Best wishes! <3


	7. Super Action

It was pretty easy for Ian to zip through the streets and get away from people – criminals with weapons, in this case. He hasn’t done it too often ever since he found out about his powers, but his energy levels were high enough to run whenever he needed to. The morning seemed like a good time to fight crime; usually when he got sleepy or just slightly weak, he would slow down some. Now, he had all of the might in him to not only protect himself, but also protect the people around him as best as he could.

Unfortunately, he could only protect other people so much. There were a bunch of these…well, hypnotized, mortal beings around here. They – well, really Max’s abilities, but Ian didn’t want to focus on that too much – were the reason that Chicago’s crime rates were going up lately. It has been violent around here for a while with all of the protests and gang shootings in the lower-class areas, and with the mind manipulation equated into the situation, it only got worse.

The redhead zipped past about six blocks under a minute and observed the scene in front of Philly’s Pancake Patties. He almost couldn’t see much, with the speed he was running in, but through the window where he and his family were just sitting, Mickey and the kids were nowhere in sight.

Mickey, Max, and Isaac were still underneath the table, Mickey holding his kids tight as he overheard more gunshots outside of the restaurant. People all around Philly’s were trying to duck as well, aware of the fact that bullets were being aimed in their general direction. One of them, in fact, shattered the window above Mickey’s table, causing the younger boys to whimper.

“Shh, hey,” Mickey spoke to the boys, softly rubbing Max’s back. “It’s gonna be alright, okay?”

Neither Max nor Isaac seemed to believe him. Hell, Mickey didn’t think he believed himself, either. All he was thinking about, other than the kids’ safety, was Ian doing all of the work outside with a bunch of other violent people with guns and whatnot in their possession. Ian could literally outrun the speed of a bullet, sure, but there was no telling what could happen if a bullet struck him in the chest or some as he ran, and that scared the shit out of Mickey to no end.

“I need you two to listen to me, alright?” He ran his other hand through Isaac’s dark hair as he peeked above the table to observe the scene outside. A school bus had turned around a corner, and the driver got shot multiple times before a minute could even pass. “Your dad might need some help, and I don’t want him getting hurt out there.”

“But Dad said he could run away from them,” Max explained.

“Yeah, I know what he said,” Mickey responded, “but sometimes, it’s not that easy, Max. It’s like intending to go to sleep for only ten more minutes, but you end up doing it for an hour. Things don’t usually go as planned, and I don’t want your father getting shot or anything, trying to protect us.”

Another gunshot, and Isaac was burying his face into Mickey’s shirt. Mickey squeezed him a little bit and gave him a kiss on the head. “I’m gonna go out there and help him out a bit. I want you two to stay inside, under the table. Whatever you do, don’t move.” Max nodded, and Mickey looked down at his little boy below him. “Isaac, if one of those idiots comes in to hurt you guys, I want you to use your ice powers.”

Isaac’s chin began to tremble. “What if they don’t work, Papa?”

“They’re going to work,” Mickey replied, reaching up to the table surface to grab some of Ian’s discarded water to give to Isaac. He allowed the little boy to sip some of it before Mickey placed the glass back on the table. “I’m counting on you, bud. Your brother can’t do too much with what he has right now, and I need you two to be safe. You think you can do this for your old man?”

Isaac hesitated for a little bit. He wanted what Mickey wanted: for he, his brother, and his parents to be safe and sound, free from all of the dangers of the world. Mickey definitely understands; Isaac never asked to exist as a superhero, and now that he’s living that reality, he’s exposed to a shit ton of danger left and right, and they were the only living beings they knew of that could stop all of it. If it were up to Mickey, he would have kept Isaac and Max and home, letting them watch all of the cartoons they could rest their eyes on and having them ignore the tension created by a violent and cruel society.

Unfortunately, that was nowhere near possible in this lifetime, anyway. At the end of the day, superhero or not, sacrifices have to be made in order to survive.

Biting down on his bottom lip, Isaac nodded. Mickey leaned down to give both of the boys a kiss on the forehead before crawling from underneath the table, checking the scene outside again. The boys watched as Mickey created a force field around himself that caused an oncoming bullet to bounce off of it, letting it boomerang back to the criminal that stood four feet away.

“Papa,” Max whimpered, holding his brother close to him.

“Stay under there, Max,” Mickey warned him. “Daddy and I will be back soon, I promise.”

* * *

Ian piled a few of the guns he collected from the criminals into a pile behind a large, yellow truck parked about a mile away from the pancake place. He had a black handgun in one hand and a bald criminal in another. Cold sweat was rolling down the man’s face, onto the black tattoos he had inked on the left side. He tried wiggling out of Ian’s grasp, but Ian was quick on his feet – literally.

“Tell me why you’re doing all of this,” Ian demanded, burning holes into the man’s eyes. The man was silent. “Tell me why the fuck you’re doing this!” Ian shouted louder and angrier.

“Surrender your soul, you sick fuck!” the man growled under Ian’s touch. He tried yanking himself away again, only for Ian to maintain a stronger hold. It was hell on the redhead’s hands, but he wasn’t going to let this city crumble with all of these brainwashed, homicidal maniacs. “This city is mine, fucking mine!”

“I’m taking your ass to the station,” Ian spoke over the man’s raging voice. “You can have a dirty, fucking cell all to yourself, and that’ll be as close to owning something bigger than you as you’ll get.”

The man was a little strong for his size, and sometimes pulling him in the direction Ian wanted him to go in was much of a task, but he would be willing to do it if it meant getting this guy into police custody so he won’t hurt other people ever again. So Ian grabbed his two wrists, holding them behind the man’s back.

However, when he was about to make his run, he immediately saw a woman in the distance, eyes full of fury and a gun in her possession. It was aimed directly at Ian’s face, and Ian prepared himself to jet out of the scene with the culprit in his hands as quickly as possible.

That was when the man was snatched out of Ian’s hands, tossed up ahead towards the oncoming bullet. The first bullet pierced through the man’s chest, and a second fired from the woman’s gun, but then it bounced off an invisible shield, returning back to the woman up ahead and shooting her instantly in the neck. Ian didn’t even register the fact that Mickey’s hand was on his wrist, ultimately creating the shield around both men so neither one of them would get hurt.

“Mickey, what the fuck?” Ian barked at the sight of his husband standing in front of him.

“I’m not letting you do this shit by yourself,” Mickey argued.

“But what about the kids?”

“They’re in the restaurant. Isaac’s gonna take care of it, if things go wrong.”

“Mickey, are you kidding me –“

“Fuck, look out!”

The shorter man created the shield once again as two more men started shooting more bullets in their direction. This time, both of Mickey’s arms were around Ian’s upper body, keeping him close enough so he won’t get shot.

Ian’s heart was beating rapidly and the sight of all of the commotion outside of his and Mickey’s little bubble right now. It was a fucking war zone out there. Isaac and Max were out there, for Christ’s sake. He wanted to see them again, to hold them close and keep any weapon-holding moron from touching a hair on them. Fuck, why couldn’t Mickey just hold onto his promises, for once?

“Ian,” Mickey called, his voice a little louder than usual now that more explosions were being heard outside of their bubble. “I need you to fuckin’ run, man.”

“What?”

“Just run,” Mickey explained. “I’ll hold onto you, alright? I’m not letting you get fucking shot out there.”

“Mickey –“

“What did I say?” Ian gulped at the boom from Mickey’s voice. Mickey ran a hand through his face and continued. “We can try and get these fuckers to a prison cell if we have a better plan than this, alright? I want you to go in the restaurant and get the kids –“

“Max can’t be out here, Mickey. He doesn’t have powers like ours; they could kill him.”

“I’m the one with the fucking shield, remember?” Mickey asked. Another beat, and he added, “I have an idea, but we have to move. We can’t stay here like this.”

Ian’s heart began to skip a couple of beats. He didn’t like the idea of Max and Isaac out here with all of the guns firing everywhere. Had they stayed at home and ate breakfast, and then Ian could have left them with a babysitter or something so he and Mickey could fight crime on their own. Isaac had a whole life ahead of him, as did Max, and Ian didn’t want to put them at risk.

But Ian also trusted Mickey. He trusted him for years, and if he really had a plan up his sleeve, he prayed to God that it would actually work.

More random Chicago citizens started coming out of nowhere, some of them attacking the original criminals from the scene of the crime. About six of these people were looking at Ian and Mickey dead in the eyes, walking slowly with their weapons – hammers, chainsaws, jackhammers, guns, knives – literally anything they could find in their own homes. Mickey continued to call to Ian, waiting for him to make any kind of move. When Ian observed the scene around him and conducted an escape plan, he went into action.

With a blink of an eye, Ian and Mickey had disappeared, leaving the others confused and frustrated. Ian held Mickey, and vice versa, as Ian ran through the neighborhoods, with Mickey keeping the two invisible to the naked eye. He had no clue as to why Ian was running around the damn neighborhood like he’s on a roller coaster ride, but he settled on waiting and seeing how this would all go.

The duo eventually made it back to the restaurant, no one suspecting that they were even there – or Ian and Mickey hoped, at least. Mickey kept his eyes on the people outside – some of them were actually walking towards the restaurant, grinning wildly at the people screaming on the inside. “Shit,” he muttered.

“Papa?” Ian and Mickey heard Isaac’s small voice. It amazed Mickey how much better his son reacted to him whenever he was in his invisible state.

With Mickey’s hand still in his, ensuring that no one could see them, Ian made his way towards Isaac and Max, kneeling down beside the booth. “Isaac, Max,” Ian whispered, “Papa and Daddy are here; you two are gonna be alright.”

“Daddy, what’s going on?” Max asked, worried.

“We’re taking you two out of here,” Mickey whispered. “I want you two to each reach out a hand.” The two kids looked at each other with much confusion but gave in anyway, Ian grabbing onto Max and Mickey grabbing onto Isaac. Mickey’s invisibility powers transferred through his and Ian’s hands, making both of the boys disappear from everyone else’s line of sight.

A woman sitting at the booth behind Ian and Mickey shrieked, causing Ian and Mickey to flinch. “Honey, did you just see that?”

The woman’s husband leaned to the side, staring at the checkered floor, oblivious to the fact that Ian, Mickey, and the kids were still kneeled down there. “What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t you just see two boys right there?” When the woman got no answer, she explained herself. “They both disappeared.”

Mickey scoffed. “Nice going, Sherlock,” he whispered to himself, earning a kick in the leg from Ian. Within a second, the four of them were out of the building, ignoring the gasps from a couple of other people in the restaurant.

* * *

The four of them were still invisible when the maniacs outside were standing in front of the entrance. Mickey tightened his hold around Isaac’s hand, and his son stepped closer to his side, worried as to whether or not those people would shoot him in the face right now. A couple of larger guns were aimed at the front entrance – well, really at Ian and Mickey – and the moment the bullets started to fire, Mickey’s shield returned, causing the bullets to boomerang once again.

Max used his free hand to grab onto Ian’s shirt tightly. Ian couldn’t stand the sight of Max looking so frightened. He can’t let go of him – not now, not ever. He wasn’t planning on doing that, and none of these assholes were going to make him.

Mickey thought that the force field would work, but then someone rounded the building with a hose in their hands.

Fuck. _Fuck_. No way.

Isaac started to whimper a bit, causing Mickey to bend down and whisper in the little boy’s ear, keeping his eyes ahead. “Remember what we taught you, alright?” Isaac nodded, but that only prompted him to shake a little more, his nerves clearly getting the better of him.

All of a sudden, water ended up pouring on top of all four of their heads, and an off-guard Mickey Milkovich let out a disturbed shout. “Fuck!”

A brunette man grinned as he aimed his gun at the invisible figures. Lucky for Ian and Mickey, the redhead ran past the man with the bullet. The foursome made it a few feet from the restaurant, their physical features making a return.

Isaac’s chin trembled as the brunette man turned his body around and noticed him and his family standing at a fair-enough distance for him to shoot. He tried focusing on Mickey’s words, putting everything he learned from weeks of practice into good use. His baby blue eyes got brighter at the sight of the man with the gun, and without a second of pondering over his next actions, Isaac gave him a cold, hard stare, which froze all of his limbs and froze the bullet in mid-air.

Ian left Mickey with the kids again to snatch a couple more guns out of the hands of some of the patrons. A couple of them tried chasing after Ian, but with Mickey and Isaac’s help, they weren’t able to get that far. Thanks to Isaac, about five of them were frozen in place.

“Dad!” Both Ian and Mickey turned their heads at the sight of a frightened Max, who stood timidly in front of a man that was about to cut his neck in half. A heavyset woman noticed that Isaac’s eyes were trained on someone whose limbs were freezing at about negative twenty degrees, and she took the opportunity to snatch the little boy before he could cause anymore damage.

Ian took this chance to run towards the woman, confusing her with every move he made and bringing Isaac into his arms. The redhead used his super speed to take the woman to police custody before making his return back to the restaurant, Isaac on his hip the entire time.

“I got you, baby, alright?” Ian promised, kissing him on the forehead. “She’s gone, alright? Daddy’s right here.”

* * *

Meanwhile, in his invisible form, Mickey had used a couple of the guns to shoot the rest of the patrons in their arms and legs. His right hand held the handguns he was able to retrieve, and his left hand gripped tightly onto Max’s hand. The dude that had the knife in his hand now had the damn thing in his back, all thanks to Mickey. He wasn’t letting the kid out of his sight anytime soon.

“Papa, I’m scared.”

Mickey immediately shushed him, aiming the gun at a woman’s hamstring from afar. “I don’t want them finding us, Max, okay? I just need you quiet for a little while longer.” Max nodded, but then he went back to flinching at the sound of the gun shots going off in every which direction.

All of a sudden, Mickey felt a bullet go straight through his leg, sending him falling to the ground. “Shit!” he cursed out, shutting his eyes as he felt the pain go through his body. Soon enough, he and Max started appearing into view.

“Papa!” Max called, feeling at his most vulnerable as he witnessed his father lying there on the sidewalk. He tried shaking him and pulling him up, but no matter how much Mickey tried to do what his son wanted, he felt himself falling back down, his leg slowly failing on him.

Ian and Isaac were watching the scene at a distance, and Isaac could feel the tears well up in his eyes. “Papa,” he started to cry, and Ian held the little boy as close to him as he could.

Mickey was hurt. He was actually fucking hurt.

A part of Ian wanted to run over there and yell at Mickey for being such an asshole and getting the kids involved in this shit – Max was over there with him, for fuck’s sake, and a couple of still-alive patrons were surrounding the father-son duo a little quicker than Ian wanted them to.

No, Ian’s not going to let more damage occur for his husband and son than what’s already done. He has to do something – get Mickey to a damn hospital.

With Isaac still on his hip, Ian zipped over to the man with the knife in his back, taking the knife out and stabbing the remaining patrons as he ran. Once Ian was sure that the coast was finally clear, he made his way over to Mickey and Max, kneeling down and observing the sight before him.

Mickey had gotten shot before, Ian knew this already. The first time it happened, Ian and Mickey were in the Kash N’ Grab, having their usual round of sex in the storage unit after Ian witnessed his mother coming back to the house for the first time in a while. All things shot down straight to hell the moment Kash Karib walked in on them, causing Mickey to run away only to return to make things clear with the man whose sanity Mickey ruined.

That was the same day Kash used his gun on one of his known enemies for the first time in his entire life. That was the same day Mickey got arrested for not paying for a fucking Snickers bar.

Fucking Mickey, always finding himself in deep shit.

“Ian…” Mickey grunted, reaching down to touch his injured leg. “I can’t fucking move, man.”

The redhead smoothed his hand through Mickey’s dark hair. “I’m gonna get you to a hospital, Mick. It’s gonna be okay.”

“Papa!” Isaac called, his eyes wet. “Papa, please don’t die.” Mickey was vulnerable many times in his life – Ian was mostly involved with those times, although he would never admit to anyone other than Ian and maybe the kids – but the sound of a heartbroken Isaac or Max made the tears form in his own eyes. He should be strong for his kids; after all, that’s what fathers are for, right?

“Baby,” Ian spoke to Isaac, “Papa’s not going to die. Daddy will get him to the hospital, and he’s gonna be all better before we know it, okay?” Isaac hesitated for a moment before he nodded, and Ian placed the boy on the ground before scooping Mickey up, bridal-style. Ian shook a little bit as he heard Mickey wince, careful as to not hold him in a certain way that would make him hurt even worse.

The four of them didn’t get a chance to move before they noticed two ambulances and four police cars pulling up in front of the restaurant. A cot was being rolled over to their general area, and about two or three doctors were asking for information in regards to what happened to Mickey. The three of them took Mickey out of Ian’s arms, much to the redhead’s dismay, and placed him on the cot to observe his injuries. The two men kept a firm hold onto each other’s hand, and Max and Isaac stood behind Ian and watched sadly as Mickey rested there, the blood staining the cot.

Ian gulped as one of the policemen got out of his car and strolled on over towards him. “Ian Gallagher?”

“Is there a problem, officer?”

“Yeah,” the officer began, “um, we wanted to ask you some questions about –“

“Is this gonna take long?” Ian rushed a bit, his eyes falling on Mickey’s. The man on the cot felt his eyes get a little heavy as more blood dripped out of his leg. “I – I have to go with him to the hospital, sir. He – he’s hurt. My kids need him. _I_ need him.”

“I understand, but –“

“I need help getting him to the hospital, protecting our kids –“

“This is, actually, about your oldest kid, Mr. Gallagher.” Ian frowned for a moment, glancing down at Max before looking back into the officer’s eyes. “We have gotten evidence from an anonymous source that your kid was the reason behind all of the murders.”

Mickey bit his bottom lip, worry rushing through him with the combination of his injured limb and the officer’s words. “Fuck.”

“Officer,” Ian begged, wanting to get his family out of this wild mess, “you have to believe me, okay? Max doesn’t want to be like this. We – we’re not even sure how this happened –“

“Mr. Gallagher,” the officer persisted, “I’m going to need to see you down at the station for questioning.”

Ian rapidly shook his head. “No, no, no – I need to be at the hospital with Mickey, okay? I need to be with my kids! You can’t –“

He barely had a chance to continue before another officer joined them, grabbing Ian by his wrists and placing handcuffs on them. Isaac and Max screamed with much worry, looking between one of their fathers and his struggling against cold metal and the other one being wheeled away towards the ambulance. A third cop spoke with the kids as gently as possible before grabbing the children’s hands, guiding them towards one of the police cars that had been parked by a fire hydrant.

“Wha – no, don’t take my kids!” Ian panicked when he noticed that Isaac and Max were walking away from him. “Isaac! Max!” He started to force his body towards their general direction, but two of the cops had a firm hold onto his arms, and the handcuffs was making it harder to run as swiftly as he wanted to.

Finally, Ian was being shoved into a cop car, the redhead hyperventilating as he watched the ambulances drive straight to the hospital and the other three cop cars straight to the police station.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took a good while to type, and a few factors contributed into that, one of them being that I started my second semester of college this past Monday. So you won't see too many of my updates for a little while, for I am trying to maintain the GPA I wanted to achieve.
> 
> As far as this chapter, I don't think I had a really specific route that I wanted it to go in. I mean, I planned for Ian, Mickey, and the kids to get caught, but the more specific details weren't planned. So I'm not really sure what I even think about this chapter, honestly. But I hope you guys like it.


	8. Super Surprises

Ian didn’t like it here. He didn’t like being separated from his sons and his husband. He didn’t like how people were interpreting Max’s abilities, calling him a murderer for doing something he can’t even control. The odds never seemed to be in Ian’s favor, or his family’s, for that matter. With every good aspect that’s reached their lives, another one seems to come. It felt so much like psychological torture.

The kids had been in another room with a detective for what seemed to be longer than an hour. Ian had no particular idea on what the hell those guys were even doing with those two, and if it’s what Ian thinks it is, then he was bound to throw up any second.

“He looks very beat.” A black officer peaked through the one-way glass at the redhead inside. He was accompanied by a shorter female officer who just so happened to walk past after retrieving some files from another room.

She took a couple of steps forward and watched as Ian ran his hands through his red streaks in complete distress and exhaustion. _Everyone is innocent until proven guilty in the court of law_ , many have spoken. Well what, in this case, was really something to be guilty of? This wasn’t like an ordinary crime in Chicago, if one could disclose it a crime. Sure, gang and regular gun violence is a crime – or just any form of homicide, for that matter.

In Max’s case, though, what really was it? According to the boys and their father, Max never intended to kill anyone, so it technically didn’t count as homicide to an extent. However, no detective or police officer can dismiss the familiar glow in the eyes of the offenders that very well matched the color of the kid’s hair. It was unlike anything the Chicago Police Department has ever seen before.

“The family’s supposed to be…superheroes.” The male officer stated, feeling a little weird about the reality he was describing. “The husband’s out in the hospital with a fucked-up leg.”

“Abilities?”

“The dude’s invincible.”

“You mean invisible.”

“The fuck knows anymore? Shit, I could mean both.”

And he was right. Superheroes aren’t common on this planet, even if that _all heroes don’t wear capes_ get-up is true. Many middle school kids wished that their favorite comic book characters would come to life and save them all from this bullshit reality they were living in, but even they knew that it wouldn’t come true. Now Ian, Mickey, and the boys were here, and it’s like meeting said childhood characters in real life, even if they didn’t possess all of the same powers.

Max wasn’t like his two dads and his brother, though. No, he wasn’t the superhero people imagined when they read the comics or watched the movies. When they brought him in for questioning, some of the cops even questioned whether Max was an actual superhero or not. It didn’t seem like it so far; the boys have confessed to all of the training that Ian and Mickey put them through, and for Max, they came up short.

“What do you think they’re gonna do to them?” the female officer asked, her eyes still on Ian inside the room by himself. Her arms were folded in front of her chest, the file folder still in her grasp. Under the cheap fluorescent lighting of the interrogation room, Ian looked as pale as a ghost and quite depressing.

The male officer sighed. “I overheard some of the folks from the homicide department. Some said he’s not old enough for juvenile hall since he’s only about seven. Others thought that he might be taken away from the family for safety reasons.”

“His two fathers and his younger brother have super powers,” the woman argued.

“Superheroes can be vulnerable, Weiss.” That comment shut her up immediately, and the two watched as Ian rested his forehead on his arms, fingers gripping tightly onto his elbows. A long beat in the officers’ conversations lasted until the male officer spoke again. “Besides, you ever think about what would happen if the dads ended up being the cursed ones?”

“What are you saying? This isn’t a biological thing we’re dealing with here?”

“Don’t seem like it. The only family history these folks have, from the information the detective has on them, is of bipolar disorder on the Gallagher side, but none of the mother’s genes were passed down to her sons and daughters.” He paused. “Or at least that anyone knows of. That shit’s kind of tricky to pinpoint.”

The female officer sighed out of complete confusion on this case. This was a tough one, and not one anyone on the force was ready to figure out right now. No one had evidence of anything that could have sparked Max’s abilities nor did anyone, based on the information Ian provided when he was questioned, know who could have brought this upon the young boy.

Regardless, the city – not just the city; the entire world – was at great danger, and Max seemed to be the only cause of the problem they had right now.

The two officers continued to eye Ian through the one-way glass, both with similar thoughts in each other’s heads. They didn’t want to separate the boy from his family, but what else were they going to do?

* * *

“Ah, you’re awake.” Dr. Tyson spoke as she entered Mickey’s hospital room.

The raven-haired man woke up in a haze, seeing white everywhere he turned. He would have been better off if this was heaven, but due to some unfortunate fate, he was here all alone with professionals looking down on him.

White dressings were perfectly wrapped around Mickey’s wounded leg. The sight of those things made Mickey feel uncomfortable. He had gotten shot before, but this time around, it appeared to be more painful, considering the risks he had to take for his husband and two kids.

Speaking of which…

“Where’s Ian?” Mickey spoke, starting to panic a little bit at the absence of the redhead. “Where the hell is he? I need to see him.”

“Your husband is still at the police station, according to one of the doctors who carried you in,” Dr. Tyson stated. “He and the kids should be done in a little while.”

“I wanna see Ian,” Mickey replied impatiently. “M-My husband, my babies. I need to – just help me into a chair or some shit. I need to see them.”

“Mr. Milkovich –“

“Gallagher.” Mickey corrected with an inch of his eyebrow.

“Mr. Gallagher,” Dr. Tyson tried again, “you won’t be discharged out of the hospital until we know for sure that you’re stable enough to get out on your own.”

Mickey bit down on his bottom lip out of aggravation. “Bullshit,” he muttered under his breath, looking from his left to his right and feeling a bit claustrophobic within the hospital’s atmosphere. He hated hospitals. Ian knew how much Mickey hated hospitals, yet he was in one without the company of his husband. The fact that the cops are also questioning Isaac and Max didn’t make the situation any better.

“We’re doing everything we can. It’ll be over before you know it."

“You’re goddamn right it’s gonna be over,” Mickey barked back. “I’m sitting here like a chopped-down fucking tree while some stick-in-the-ass cops are probably taking one of my boys away and preparing to lock Ian in some dirty holding cell. And my youngest is only four. Fucking _four_! You can’t just let me sit here and let them suffer.”

Dr. Tyson slumped her shoulders, sighing at the sight of a distressed father of two from the other side of the room. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gallagher. I don’t make the rules around here; I just follow them.” With that, she was out of the room to care for another patient, leaving Mickey to complain from where he sat.

Mickey tapped impatiently onto the cushion of the hospital bed, his mind stuck on Ian and the boys. Mickey had to have been in surgery for an hour or so. How long were Ian and the kids at the police station? What the hell were the cops even asking him? What were they doing to Max? Are Ian and Isaac even okay? Are those goddamn cops trying to separate his whole family or what?

To his left, his coat was sitting on the back of a hospital chair. Mickey didn’t want to risk moving too much and hurting himself, but he really needed to get in touch with his husband and kids. He really missed them. He just wanted to make sure they were okay.

He pulled the chair over by the arm rest and grabbed the coat, fishing inside the pockets for his iPhone. The lock screen photo was of Mickey sitting on the living room couch with Isaac on his lap, Ian standing behind the couch and giving Mickey a kiss on the cheek. Other than the caller ID photo Mickey chose for Ian’s number, it was one of Mickey’s favorite photos. It was one of the many photos taken long before the four of them knew they had super powers or abilities.

It really made Mickey want to go back to simpler times.

Mickey unlocked his phone and called Ian’s number only for the damn thing to go to voicemail. He tried a couple more times, but Ian still didn’t answer. After three more times, Mickey was tempted to throw his phone across the room. However, with the condition he was in, he thought against it.

Instead, he went to his photo gallery and scanned through the endless photos of him, Ian, and the boys. Some of them were photos Max took, and they were all too priceless to delete. One really good one Max took was an off-guard photo of Mickey and Isaac on the king-sized bed one morning, the two of them laughing as Ian tickled Mickey into oblivion. Isaac smile was a youthful version of Mickey’s. So was his tiny body and that infectious laugh. Mickey missed that laugh, and it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since he had been separated from the little guy.

All of a sudden, two people in doctor’s coats barged through the door. They looked to be in a hurry, which made Mickey feel a little worried. “Mr. Milkovich,” one of them spoke without warning, “we’re here to give you your shot.”

Mickey frowned. “Wait, what the fuck?”

“You’re on the list for a new experiment,” the second one spoke, closing the door behind him and putting on some fresh, clean gloves. “Please keep still as we carry on the procedure.”

“Wait, what fucking experiment, and how come I’m the last to know?” Mickey asked furiously, but neither of the men would answer his question. Mickey watched as one of them grabbed a syringe with a needle out of one of the cabinets, and he automatically got nervous. “You’re not answering my fucking question!”

“You’re gonna feel numb with time,” the first one spoke again.

“Get your fucking hands off me!” Mickey shouted, but neither of the men in the room paid any attention to him. A gloved hand covered Mickey’s mouth immediately, and Mickey did everything he could to shove the guy off. Unfortunately, the guy’s arm was very strong, and Mickey was already in too much pain to move too much.

Before Mickey knew it, a needle pierced his neck, and some medicine was injected into his system, knocking him out almost instantly.

* * *

Natalie Douglas entered the police station, dressed head to toe in policeman attire. None of the cops in the station recognized her, which helped plan her scheme perfectly. She just needed to find Ian and the kids, and everything will come to fruition.

“Yo,” she spoke to one of the officers standing by the staff entrance with a donut in his hand. “I was called to help out with the Gallagher case by the boss.”

“Ian Gallagher’s being interrogated again,” the man answered. “The boys are in the staff lounge.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Natalie kept her head down most of the time in the event that anyone spotted her face and started asking questions. She didn’t want any more problems than she already had. Lucky for her, she found the staff lounge within fifteen seconds, and she walked right on in, noticing Max and Isaac sitting by each other with juice boxes in their possession.

“Max and Isaac Gallagher,” she greeted with a bright tone in her voice. Neither boy spoke, so she continued. “Officer Wilford.” She held the badge up so Max and Isaac could see it. “I’ve been asked to talk to the two of you. Follow me.”

“What about Daddy?” Isaac asked, worried.

“He’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Trust was a hard thing to obtain. Fortunately for Natalie, and unfortunately for the boys, the Gallagher kids were too gullible to boot.

Natalie had Isaac on her hip, and she held onto Max’s hand, as she guided the boys out of the room. Before they made it over to the staff entrance where Natalie once was, an officer called to her. “Hey,” he said, getting closer with every step. “Where are you going with those two? The father still needs ‘em.”

She knew she was caught. She knew that her plan was going to be fucked in some areas. She knew that she crawled into a tight spot. She knew all of this but still had back-up plans of her own.

So she turned around, eyeing the only man in the hall, and pulled her gun on him, shooting him in the face. The boys started to scream, but Natalie was out the door and into the black vehicle that was parked outside within a flash. She dragged Max into the car and settled Isaac on her lap. The driver in the front seat was already ready to pull off.

Natalie pulled her phone out and called her brother from inside the car. “Floyd, are you still there?”

“In the staff bathroom,” he whispered, keeping a low profile in case anyone suspected anything.

“Redhead’s still in the building. Get to him and get him out of there. Quick!”

“Natalie, what the fuck did you do?”

“I have the kids. I took care of it.”

“They’re gonna be after your ass.”

“We lost them already. I’m checking the road behind us now.”

Floyd ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Fuck.” Murdering other people while kidnapping Ian and the kids was not a part of the original plan. Natalie always found ways to add in extra tidbits to their situations, and this was getting the two of them into some deeper shit.

“Floyd,” Natalie barked. “Fucking go already.”

“I gotta wait for Julius to get here. He and two of his college buddies already got that Milkovich fucker from the hospital.”

“Where the hell is Stan?”

“I thought he was with you.”

“I told him to find Ian in case you didn’t.”

The plan was already ruined, based on what Natalie was telling him. Floyd knew that he should have gone with his instincts. Instead, his sister’s heading downtown with two kids in the back seat and cops on the look-out for her in the process. Ian probably doesn’t even know what’s going on, either, and once he does, he’s gonna have not only Natalie’s ass, but Floyd’s as well.

Floyd balled up one fist as he responded to her. “You’re getting us fucked here, Nat.”

“Stop being a fucking pussy and just go.”

“The cops are gonna be after you.”

“Tell that to the Honda Civic right behind me, Floyd,” Natalie stated, her eyes on the cars behind her. “Now hurry the fuck up before someone notices you.” Before Floyd had a chance to interject, she hung up her cell phone, leaving Floyd to grit his teeth. If he didn’t want to be done with this scheme before, he sure as fuck did now.

* * *

A gun shot rang through Ian’s ears, and he automatically got frightened. His kids were somewhere in the building still, and the last thing Ian wanted to see was a body bag with any of his kids in them.

The officer that was talking to him had excused their session to step out of the room and check out the commotion. Before he had the chance to report back on anything, another gun shot was heard. Ian immediately fell to the ground, hiding behind his chair and hyperventilating at the sound. He should be somewhat familiar with it since he grew up on the South Side of Chicago, but if anything, it was triggering him.

Someone had stepped into the room, casting a look over at Ian hiding behind the chair. “Come on, Gallagher. Let’s go.” Judging by the man’s authoritative voice, Ian knew he was gonna get hurt sooner or later.

“What the hell is going on? Who are you?”

“Quit fucking stalling. You’re coming with me?”

“Where the fuck are my damn kids? What’s going on?”

“Is a bullet to the fucking eye gonna get your ass to shut up?” the man asked, pulling a gun from behind him and aiming it at Ian. The redhead was scared. His kids were in danger, and Mickey was off at a hospital somewhere. He didn’t like this at all.

The man was seconds into pulling the trigger, but Ian was quick on his feet. He zipped past the man, getting out of the room as fast as he could. He searched every room in the station for the boys, but they were nowhere to be found. By the time he reached the back of the building, however, he noticed a dead body on the ground. It was one of the police officers.

“Oh, my God,” Ian gaped at the sight of the blood pouring out of the guy’s face. The smell of iron was making Ian sick and intensified his fears of his kids dying on him. They can’t die. They can’t be hurt. They had to be safe somewhere, but where?

Ian heard some noises from behind him, and he knew that the guy that tried to shoot him was on his tail. So he ran out of the building and down five blocks in case he tried to locate him. When he was far away from the chaos as possible, Ian pulled his phone out and called Mickey’s cell phone. He didn’t pick up.

The only thing that was preventing Ian from crying right now was the possibility of his kids being alive right now. He had to be strong for them and get them back, and that’s what made Ian rush on over to the hospital.

* * *

When Mickey woke up, he was no longer in the hospital. He didn’t know where he was, though he did know he was in some dining hall with a bunch of supplies and other shit on carts on either side of him. There were also some steel doors with holes in them standing right in front of him, and he didn’t know whether to feel worried or what.

“Hey!” Mickey shouted, receiving his echo back. “Where the fuck am I? Somebody get me the fuck out of here!” Mickey tried to get himself up, but he realized that the wheelchair he was sitting in was chained to the floor so he couldn’t move, added to the fact that his wrists were taped to the arm rests.

Mickey did everything he could – shake the wrist restraints off him, push himself forward to move the chair – but nothing worked. He called to literally anyone a couple of times, but he still didn’t get an answer.

Finally, two double doors opened in front of him. A woman was pushing another wheelchair through, and sitting in the seat was a little boy with his mouth and wrists taped. Mickey’s heart rate when up when he recognized who it was. “Isaac!” Mickey shouted to him, struggling to get the tape off his wrists once again. He heard a muffled “Papa” escape Isaac’s lips, and that alone worried the shit out of the older man.

The other wheelchair stopped about two feet in front of Mickey, and the woman strolled on over to Mickey. The tattooed man assumed that she was a cop and immediately got defensive.

The moment she spoke, though, was when Mickey’s world stopped. “Hey there, boyfriend,” Natalie addressed him finally, removing the cop hat from off her head.

“Natalie?” Mickey spoke.

Natalie gestured towards her own outfit. “I know. I figured that I’d give it a go with this cop thing.” A beat. “You know, ‘cause it was a worth a shot.” Nothing about her cop joke – or her _getting shot_ joke, however you interpret it – was funny to Mickey.

“Why the fuck do you have my baby boy over there like that?” Mickey asked angrily. “And why the fuck am I here? What the fuck is going on –“

Natalie shushed him before he continue asking anymore questions. She tossed the hat off to the side before resting her hands over Mickey’s forearms, leaning into his personal space. “Well, it’s pretty simple, actually,” she stated with a smile on her face. “I don’t wanna tell the story alone, though. I thought I would bring in a special guest.”

Mickey frowned in confusion, trying to understand where she was going with this. He didn’t have to put in too much thought into it, though, because a certain presence came up behind him, and the voice that accompanied the person behind him made the hairs on Mickey’s neck stand up.

“Hello there, son.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been putting this off for so long, and this chapter feels rushed. But I plan on finishing this, so I'm not gonna just abandon it. Lucky I planned some of the ending out already, so we'll see how this goes. I hope everyone has a good day/night. <3


	9. Super Revelations

Mickey was as still as a brick at the sound of his father’s voice ringing through his ears. He was a part of all of this – but why? Why the fuck would Natalie want anything to do with Terry, Mickey, and Mickey’s son?

Terry let out an eerie laugh at Mickey’s silence. “Oh, that shut you up?” he asked, slapping Mickey across the back of the head. For the first time in a long time, Mickey felt the intimidation radiating off of Terry’s presence. The day Mickey came out, and Terry got arrested, Mickey thought that he would feel physically stronger against the likes of his dad.

This time, he was wrong.

“I guess I was mistaken when I figured that this would be a nice family reunion,” Natalie spoke, glancing between the two Milkoviches.

Over behind Natalie, Mickey could see his son shaking at the sight of his father, injured from the bullet wound and surrounded by complete strangers. The more Mickey looked at his baby boy, the more motivated he was to free the both of them out of this shit hole.

“What is he doing here?” Mickey asked, trying to not sound vulnerable to the adults towering over him.

Natalie smiled. “Didn’t you hear? It’s a family reunion.” Her arms had extended out, her body swaying from one side to the other. “We’re all here, aren’t we?”

“Where’s Max?” Mickey asked, furious. “Why is Isaac tied up over there? Why the fuck are we here?”

Terry lifted a hand in Natalie’s direction. “I’ve got this, doll. Let me take over.” Mickey could feel himself gagging at Terry’s use of the word _doll_ , much less his and Natalie’s general partnership.

Natalie left Mickey and Terry to tend to Isaac on the other side of the room. Mickey noticed Natalie run a hand through Isaac’s black hair from the corner of his eye and didn’t like it one second. The woman birthed Isaac and Max, sure, but they were legally both Ian and Mickey’s children. She’s also appearing to be completely shady towards Mickey since he woke up, so he knew something was wrong automatically.

“So, uh…the kid?” Terry asked Mickey, rounding the wheelchair and nursing a bottle of beer.

“What’s it to you? I wouldn’t have let you be a grandfather to them anyway.”

“Them?” Terry asked with fake interest that made Mickey’s ears steam. He chuckled. “So there’s another one of those gremlins running around, eh?”

“Where the fuck is Max? Let my sons go.”

“The name sounds familiar,” Natalie spoke absentmindedly to Terry. They both shared a curious look that Mickey wanted to rub off their faces. A moment later, something clicked in Natalie’s head. “Oh yeah, okay,” she replied. “I get it. One moment, please.” She started to walk away but wasn’t completely gone before she sent a devious smile in Mickey’s direction.

“So you’re out and about with a couple of rugrats, right?” Terry continued, sipping some of his beer. “Being a little house wife, attending fuckin’ PTA meetings and shit –“

“I’m not a fucking house wife!”

“That’s what you wanted when you were younger,” Terry responded. “You think I wouldn’t remember that? You and that fuckin’ AIDS-spreadin’ Gallagher interruptin’ a good time? Fuckin’ cops everywhere and shit? You two fuckin’ scumbags infecting my goddamn house?”

Mickey remembers, and he doesn’t regret a moment of it.

Terry extends his arms out to his sides. “And here you are, eh?” he asks. “You betrayed the entire Milkovich name – callin’ yourself a Gallagher, havin’ two demon spawn with some fuckin’ super powers and shit –“

“Don’t call my kids _demon spawn_!” Mickey yelled at him, struggling to get out of the tape that he’s tied to.

Terry chuckled. “I knew you didn’t have the balls.” He took another sip of his beer, and Mickey took everything in him to fight off Terry’s words.

“And how do you know about their powers?” Mickey asked.

“Simple,” Terry replied, and he turned around the moment Natalie brought Max into the room. His hands were tied behind his back, and there was a red hand mark across his cheek. Mickey’s heart started beating when he saw the little boy’s face, but Terry’s next confession was the icing on top of the cake. “We gave this one his.”

Mickey’s pupils began to dilate. Terry knew about Max’s abilities? He was the one behind all of this shit?

“My cousin Julius is an expert in Chemistry,” Natalie stated, her hands on Max’s shoulders. “He graduated from Bradley University in the top fifteen percent in his graduating class. He’s been working on some experiments following his internship at a local lab, and one of his projects had been his best one yet. At first it was done with rats to test the waters, but then…” She patted Max’s shoulders, making the redhead nervous. “Your father came to me with this…silly little thought. Didn’t you, Mr. Milkovich?"

“Hon, please,” Terry responded, “ain’t nothin’ silly about your thoughts.”

Natalie grinned as she turned back to Mickey. “Isn’t it a coincidence how, almost eight years ago, he came up with the formula to test his drug’s affect on the human brain?” Mickey slowly started to frown and gape at _eight years ago_. “And look where we are, Mick. We’re here, in modern-day America, where everyone thought the worst was yet to come.” She giggled callously. “They were wrong.”

Mickey could barely form any words. Years ago, he trusted Natalie to carry Max in her womb. Years ago, Mickey and Ian wanted kids of their own, so they came to her to ask for her permission to give birth to him. Years ago, the couple was oblivious to Natalie’s intentions. She didn’t want to give birth to Max because she cared about Ian and Mickey; she gave birth to him to carry out hers and Terry’s thought-out plan. Max is the product of their so-called experiment.

And now Mickey and his family were paying the price.

“It was you,” Mickey whispered for a moment. He didn’t stay quiet, though, for the smug look on Terry’s and Natalie’s faces were getting on his nerves, and Mickey and his family had to spend weeks figuring out what was really wrong with Max to begin with.

Nothing was wrong with him. He’s perfectly fine. He just had a toxic drug going through his veins, and it’s been like that moments after he was born.

“It was fucking _you_!” Mickey screamed, struggling against the tape.

“He’s smarter than we thought he was,” Natalie stated to Terry, her eyes still on Mickey’s red face.

“Don’t go too far with that, hon,” Terry responded.

Mickey didn’t pay attention to Terry, though most of this was his fault. He was still glaring into Natalie’s eyes, burning holes in them. “I fucking trusted you! Ian and I fucking trusted you to carry our little boy. We checked in with you to see if you were still healthy and shit. We came to your goddamn ultrasounds and made sure our baby boy was fine, made sure that nothing was going to happen to him. We fucking _trusted_ you!”

“Has anyone taught you anything growing up?” Natalie asked, folding her arms in front of her chest. Terry held his hands up in mock surrender, giving her that _I told him_ face that irked Mickey so much and brought a fire to his chest. She stepped towards Mickey with a matching glare in her eyes.

“You don’t trust anyone but yourself. Me? I could have been a sociopath, for all you knew. I could have partnered with Osama Bin Laden to destroy the twin towers. You wouldn’t have known that, would you?” Mickey didn’t reply. “But hey, I want a white picked-fence family, so I don’t really give a shit, right?”

Natalie knelt down and rested her elbows on Mickey’s lap. “I have a gay sister, you know,” she stated. “My parents kicked her out, of course, and that experience just ruined the family dynamic for all of us. Talia hasn’t been invited to a Christmas dinner in years. You would think that Mommy and Daddy would have forgotten by now.” She clicked her tongue. “Not one bit, which is a disappointment considering that Talia and I were very close.”

“Fuckin’ good for you,” Mickey barked sarcastically.

Natalie didn’t budge; everything was completely still as she glared into Mickey’s blue eyes. “It’s people like you who ruin all the fun for the rest of us,” she barked. “It’s people like you who split up families for your own benefits. With time, the world is going to find out what evil people you and your bastard husband are. You will be a threat to everyone and everything you love, everyone and everything you know.”

Mickey gritted his teeth. “There’s nothing wrong with me and Ian,” he argued. “I love him, he loves me, and we love our damn kids. That’s not a fuckin’ threat to anyone.”

“But it will be,” Natalie added, and she started to imitate a news reporter, gesturing a headline with her hand. “Breaking news in Chicago, Illinois: a gay couple raises a son who possesses nearly the entire human race with his mind control abilities, and all of humanity, as we know it, will be doomed.”

“You’re just a homophobic piece of shit,” Mickey spat at her. “People are gonna trace this back to you and my fuckin’ dad, and you’ll be sent to prison, rotting in hell, for all I care –“

“Haven’t you forgotten the part where I said that you, to everyone and everything you know, will be a threat?” Natalie reminded him. When Mickey didn’t respond, she grinned. “Here. I’ll give you an example.”

She stood up and turned around, whistling to someone far off somewhere. Mickey’s heart rate started to pick up the moment she saw Fiona and Frank Gallagher tied up against large dollies. Two men were behind them, pushing the dollies closer so Mickey, Natalie, and Terry could visibly see them. Both dollies stopped about eight steps away, and Mickey noticed the detail in Fiona’s and Frank’s weak bodies. Mickey’s eyes shot down only for a second, but he could see Fiona’s bloody hand twitch. Actually, the both of them had blood all over their clothes and hands. Frank also looked at Mickey with hunger in his glowing eyes.

“What the fuck did you do to them?” Mickey asked Natalie. She didn’t speak, and Mickey started to shout. “What the fuck did you do to them?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Natalie answered. “Thank your son for doing all the work.” At the mention of Max, the two men walked over and stood on either side of him. “I was having a lunch break one moment, and then I see Mr. Frank Gallagher walking about with the stench of beer and metal on him. Poor thing was a victim to all of this chaos, so I took the liberty in taking him in. Around the same time, Julius spotted little Fiona in her home with blood all over the place.” She paused. “I don’t think I have to say whose blood it is, now do I?”

Mickey couldn’t breathe. All of the oxygen was wiped out of his body as he stared over at Fiona. He didn’t see her as the same person anymore, not after this. He didn’t want to believe it was true, but the blood on her hands was clear evidence of it.

Fiona, while under mind control, killed her brother, Liam.

“You…” Mickey responded in shock. He could feel tears in the back of his eyes. Liam can’t be dead. Liam can’t be dead because of what Natalie’s family and Terry’s homophobia did to Ian and Mickey’s child. “You fuckin’ bitch!” Mickey shouted out of anger.

“Thank you. I try.” Natalie stated, pushing her hair back. “Now if you don’t mind, our job is not complete. We’re still in the process of getting you and your husband noticed by the media, and your so-called _baby_ in our hands. And little Max here?” She gestured towards the redhead to her right. “That’s undetermined, for now. If I were the state officials, I would sent him to death row by now, but our plan, and your little boy, is too fabulous for our human patient to be killed off, right?”

“You fuckin’ leave my sons alone!” Mickey shouted again, struggling against the tape to free himself.

Terry chuckled, slapping a hand on Mickey’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t go doing that, son.”

“You two,” Natalie told the two men, “show baby Isaac and little Max around in their new home while we take care of him.”

“No!” Mickey barked. “Isaac! Max!”

“Dad,” Max started to cry as one of the men grabbed him by the arms and took him away. Isaac’s mouth was still taped, but Mickey could hear the little boy call for him as the other man wheeled him out of the room.

Wherever Ian was right now, Mickey hoped and prayed that he would find them in time.

* * *

Ian zipped through every building in downtown Chicago he could get to – through hospitals, apartment buildings, restaurants, business offices – and there was no sign of Mickey or the kids. The doctors from the hospital where Mickey was located said that Mickey was discharged earlier than expected, which was a hot load of bullshit to Ian.

The redhead was seconds to giving up when he looked across the street towards an alley where a black car was parked. He could see a man walking out with someone awfully younger than he was. The red hair was also a dead giveaway.

That man must have taken his sons.

Ian sucked in a deep breathe and exhaled, releasing the steam he was holding in after the police station break-in, and ran towards the car, punching the man square in his face. Max leaned against the wall, shocked at what was going on. He watched Ian repetitively punch the guy in the face and even grabbing his head and knocking it against the concrete, killing him almost instantly.

“Daddy,” Max let out nervously at the realization that Ian killed someone in front of his very eyes.

“Where’s your dad and your brother, huh?” Ian asked, almost out of breath.

“One of the guys took Isaac,” Max explained, “a-and Papa’s still inside.”

That was all the information Ian needed. He held Max’s hand and ran into the building, searching the area for his youngest son. In the process, he and Max ran into some men with guns in their hands, but Ian and Max dodged every single bullet. Ian even managed to grab a couple of guns and shoot a couple of guys in the face. He didn’t want to do this around his kid, but what other choice did they have? They were in danger.

Ian and Max continued to search through rooms until they found Isaac taped to a wheelchair in the lobby area of a theater. The man at the front desk was already stabbed to death, and no one else was in sight, meaning that it was some sort of trap.

“Stay close to me, Max,” Ian told his son, and they both gripped each other’s hands very hard. Max looked around him for any more signs of danger as Ian walked closer to Isaac. “Hey, muffin. It’s me, Daddy.” Ian could feel a pang in his heart at the sound of Isaac’s cries. “Where’s Papa, huh? You know where your papa is?”

Isaac’s eyes grew wider at something behind Ian and Max, and Ian started to dodge an oncoming bullet that crashed against the windows of the lobby. Isaac started to scream, wanting to free himself from the chair. It was no use.

“Isaac!” Ian called, and he and Max zipped away as a man started to charge towards them with a gun in his possession. Ian stopped for a moment to shoot stray bullets through the man’s arm and leg, and he was down without a second thought. Ian didn’t waste time giving him another bullet to the chest and face, wanting him out as soon as possible.

Once the coast was clear, Ian ran over to Isaac and removed the tape from his wrists and mouth. He picked the little boy up and held him close to his chest. Isaac continued to cry as the comfort from Ian’s hug washed all over his body. He was safe now, and no one was going to hurt him – not if Ian had anything to say for it.

“Shhh,” Ian told Isaac, patting his back a couple of times. “I’m here, baby. Daddy’s here. You two are okay. I got you.”

“I want my Papa.”

“We’re gonna get him. Trust me.” Ian placed a kiss against Isaac’s cheek and grabbed Max’s hand again. They both walked out of the lobby and further through the building once again. “I have an idea,” Ian whispered to them, “but you have to pay very close attention and stay close to me. You think you can do that?”

* * *

Natalie was on her phone after the gun shots were heard throughout the building. “Floyd, what the hell is going on?” she whispered angrily through the speaker. “There are gun shots outside, and I know something’s up. Keep an eye on it.” She hung up and turned back towards Mickey.

“Sounds like your plan is failing as we speak,” Mickey responded to her sudden call.

“That’s what I thought when I gave you ungrateful bastards your first born,” Natalie argued, “but I was wrong. Seven years old, and he’s already killed thousands of people. I’d give it another few years until everyone, excluding us, is wiped off the face of the earth.”

“What do you mean _us_? Whoever Max is controlling is unexpected.”

“To you, your precious family, and everyone else around the world, that’s true,” Natalie stated. “Julius was kind enough to invent another drug that can grant us immunity to it, so we’ll never have to experience what dear old Fiona and Frank Gallagher are going through over here.” She folded her arms. “And you’re never going to figure out what it is. Hell, you’ll never get out of that prison cell alive, I’d imagine. I really wanna know which inmate kills you first.”

“Fuck you!”

“Your place or mine?”

“Probably mine so I can get that disgusting Gallagher stench off my couch and bed sheets.”

“Fuck the both of you!” Mickey barked. “I hope you rot in hell like the rest of your relatives are right now!”

Terry sighed, shaking his head at his youngest son. He turned his head towards Natalie. “You sure we can’t just kill him right now? It would probably save us some time.”

“That’s too easy,” Natalie complained. “The world has to know what an asshole he and his shit family really is.”

“So our family is shit now, huh?” A voice interrupted the trio’s conversation. Natalie and Terry turned their heads and watched as Ian entered the room with Max and Isaac by his side. Mickey sighed in relief knowing that he and the boys were okay. “I think you’re just a little bitter, Madam Douglas.”

Natalie smirked at Ian’s entrance. “Well look who it is,” she stated. “It’s the rocket launcher.”

“No time for bullshit,” Ian barked. “Let my husband go, and we’ll walk away peacefully.”

“Let him go?” Natalie laughed. “Do you have any idea what you’re risking by walking out on those streets? The police will be after you little shits, and your son will be taken away.”

“I’ll take those chances,” Ian stated, causing Mickey to frown at his husband. “We both have working jobs and are more than capable of raising a child, so we can always get Isaac back. And even if we don’t, he has friends and relatives who will take care of him for us.”

Natalie scoffed. “Yeah, right.” Ian didn’t budge. “But I’m going to need Max in exchange for your husband.”

Ian hesitated to grant Natalie’s wishes, but for this to work, he had to do something. “Fine,” he finally let out. He could feel Max’s hand trembling in his, so he squeezed it a bit for good measure. If the circumstances were different, he would never allow Max to go with a stranger. Ian knew in his heart that this was going to work; he just needed to distract Natalie while he still could.

Natalie rounded Mickey’s wheelchair and pushed him towards Ian, removing his bindings. Once he was close enough, Mickey mouthed to Ian, “what the fuck are you doing?” Ian didn’t respond. He bent down and placed a kiss to Max’s hand before handing the boy over to Natalie.

Ian patted Isaac’s back and whispered softly into his ear. “Now, baby.” Isaac took a deep breath and stared in Natalie’s general direction. He didn’t keep his eyes off Natalie for a second, and eventually, Natalie started to feel a chill in the room. Her arm started to get frost bites, and she knew something was completely wrong.

She turned towards Ian, Mickey, and Isaac and angrily shouted, “what are you doing to me?”

“Lights out, Douglas,” Mickey declared, and Isaac’s ice powers got a little stronger within seconds. Soon enough, Natalie was frozen like a Popsicle near the center of the room.

Ian placed Isaac on the floor the moment he saw Terry trying to run out of the room and ran towards him, holding him in place. “The hell do you think you’re going?” Terry was a lot stronger than Ian was, and he started to gut at Ian’s stomach before smashing the beer bottle he was previously drinking out of.

Mickey told Isaac and Max to stay in their places as he used his invisibility powers. He made his way towards Ian and Terry, giving Terry several blows to the face that Terry couldn’t keep up with. Ian couldn’t see what was going on, but from the way Terry winched at a blow to his waist, Mickey was probably kicking him with his free leg.

Ian backed away slowly as he watched Terry get literally kicked and beaten to death before his eyes. Mickey grabbed the beer bottle and dug shards of glass into Terry’s throat, finishing him off at once.

When Mickey came back into view, he had blood all over his hands, and there were layers of tears in his eyes. Ian ran over to him and wrapped his arms around Mickey’s torso, trying to calm his husband down.

“Dad!” they both heard Max call. Ian turned his head and noticed another man, Floyd, standing by the entrance of the room. Ian was about to aim the gun at him when Floyd held his hands up in surrender.

“Whoa, wait, wait!” Floyd shouted. “I’m not here to hurt you guys.”

“How the fuck do we know that?”

“You have to forgive me for my sister, okay?” Floyd begged. “After I found out that she took the kids from the police station, I wanted out of it. And I saw you outside through the window of my van, and I didn’t want to do anything because I knew her plan was going to go into shit.”

Floyd turned his head towards Fiona and Frank, still tied on the dollies they were escorted in. They haven’t uttered out a word since they came here, and Floyd is almost certain that Natalie did something to them. “I know a way we can stop this, but you guys have to hurry and get the drugs from my cousin’s office, or else more people are going to get affected by all of this.”

Neither Ian nor Mickey trusted Floyd after the roller coaster of events that has happened today. Floyd didn’t want them to. Everything was all Natalie and Terry’s fault, and he wanted to fix everything. Some things, like the deaths of many individuals around the world, weren’t fixable, he knew; but there were some things he could reverse. He knew it, and he wanted Ian and Mickey to realize that, too.

After several minutes of thinking about it and staring in Floyd’s direction, Ian shook Mickey’s shoulder a bit, and the duo brought their kids with Floyd to their van.

Floyd drove down the street, biting his lip as he observed more chaos break out on the busy streets of Chicago. A lot of wounds won’t be healed once today is over, but there were still people who were unaffected by the mass murders. He wanted to help save them before anyone else was killed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this took long to update. Since I'm on spring break, though, this story will most likely be completed soon.
> 
> And for all of those thinking that Liam's death was so unexpected, it kind of was for me, too. I didn't intend on doing that at first, but I wanted to show Fiona's wrongdoings under mind control. Keep in mind that I still love Liam, and it wasn't Fiona's fault that he died. She's just as innocent as Max, Ian, Mickey, and Isaac are. However, once she realizes what she's done, she'll be completely devastated by it, and that's one of the major things I plan to show in the final chapter.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this update. Anything you liked? Anything you think I should improve on (besides my procrastination, because I know that's shit)? If you have any questions, or you want to send prompts for any new stories, my Tumblr ask box is always open (promqueen-and-hairgel), and I hope everyone has a good day/night, wherever you are in the world.


	10. Super Resolutions

“Okay, I need you to stay still for me, Max. Can you do that for me?” Floyd whispered to Max, who trembled and gripped onto Ian’s arms for any sort of comfort.

The kids hated getting shots, and this was no different. However, Max was tired of being called a criminal for doing this to so many people, even if Ian and Mickey told him that none of this was his fault. He just wanted to live normally again – if he ever did before all of this happened – and this was the only passageway towards that.

Max’s eyes squeezed shut, and a pained noise escaped his lips as he felt the needle pierce his skin. Ian held him tight and nestled his nose into Max’s red hair. As the drug was injected through Max’s skin, the general area started to get a little numb. “Ah, Daddy,” Max complained through the numbness.

“Is it hurting?” Ian asked softly.

“He’s most likely going to be numb for a couple of minutes,” Floyd explained, showing Ian the syringe he pricked Max’s skin with.

A cleaned-off Mickey sat about three steps away, not wanting anything to do with needles and blood. He was like the kids; he hated hospitals and getting stuck with needles and shit. Being separated from Ian and the kids hours ago with a bullet being removed from his leg brought back so many memories Mickey didn’t plan on reliving.

“You sure you’re not just messin’ with us, man?” Mickey asked, tugging Isaac closer to him. “Your sister could have killed all of us today, and there’s no telling what you could do to us next.” The guy seemed nice to them now, but he couldn’t trust anyone related to Natalie after the ridiculous story he’s heard within the past few hours.

Floyd got up from where he sat and paced over to the window. He looked out for a second, watching a mailman get slapped in the face and kicked to the ground. Eventually, all of that will stop, with the help of the drug he gave Max, but that didn’t mean Floyd wasn’t disappointed in himself and his family.

“I agreed with her in that our family has been broken apart,” Floyd started, closing the curtains and turning around towards Ian and Mickey. “She was over-the-top with the gay bashing, though. Like, she literally told me that homosexuality was the reason that she and Talia no longer talk when the reality was that our parents wouldn’t let them talk.”

Ian scoffed. “Douche bags.”

“Exactly. When I found out the extent that she was willing to go to shame gay people, I decided that I no longer wanted to be a part of all of this. Before, I was upset about Talia leaving our family as she was. You guys, you’re different from us. You both came from a not-so-accepting environment –“

“Mainly Mickey, though.”

“Don’t even bring up that son of a bitch –“

“Mickey.”

“What?”

“The kids.” Mickey just rolled his eyes in response.

“Regardless, you’ve already had crap happen in your lives before,” Floyd continued, “and you don’t deserve more of that. That’s why I didn’t tell Natalie that Ian was outside. I trust that you guys are good people with good intentions.” He paused, and a chuckle escaped his lips. “That’s probably why you have super powers and stuff, right?”

Ian smiled. “Probably.”

“We’re a pretty messed-up bunch.” Mickey joked.

Floyd looked between the couple before looking down at the kids. He hated how much stress Terry and Natalie put them through, and he really wished he could take it all back. “Are your kids okay, do you think?”

Mickey looked down at Isaac and then glanced over at Max. “They should be. They’re still pretty young, so it’s a lot for them to process.”

“And your sister?” Floyd asked Ian. He almost resisted asking that question, but he had to know something. She and Frank looked terrible the last time they saw them, and once they realize how much damage they caused, they’re going to be in some deep shit.

Ian was still for a moment, remembering that Fiona and Frank were still in the theater. “Oh, my God.” He got Max off his lap and was out the door within a second. Floyd went out to his van and helped Mickey inside, Isaac and Max in tow. A moment later, he was driving back to the theater where Frank and Fiona were located.

* * *

“Ian?” Fiona spoke. She was completely confused by what was going on, and from the look of the blood on her hands, it was safe to say that Ian didn’t want to tell her about the day she’s had.

“Fiona,” Ian greeted her, freeing her from the dolly she was tied to. Ian didn’t want her to be here; this was already dangerous territory with the dead bodies all around the building.

“Ian, where the hell am I?”

“We’re in a theater, Fiona, okay?” Ian spoke to her as gently as possible. “Something’s been going on around here, and you didn’t know what was going on –“

“Jesus Christ,” Ian and Fiona heard Frank right next to them. “Where the hell am I?” Frank repeated Fiona’s question. Ian still didn’t give two shits about Frank, but regardless, he freed the older man from the dolly before returning to Fiona. She felt herself panic a little bit at the sight of blood all over her.

“W-W-Why the hell is there blood on me?” Fiona stuttered, looking up at Ian.

“I don’t know. Everyone’s been doing some fucked-up shit lately –“

“Did I kill someone?”

“I didn’t say that –“

“Ian, who did I kill?” Fiona demanded answers, and Ian wasn’t sure how he’d give them to her. He wasn’t even there when Fiona was committing crimes somewhere on the South Side. For all Ian knew, she could have stabbed Monica when Monica made her return to the house. “Come on, Ian. I have to know what’s going on. I don’t remember killing anybody –“

“I’m just as confused as you are, Fiona,” Ian told her sincerely. “I’m not sure if you even killed anyone or not. We can’t know for sure.”

Moments later, Floyd and Mickey showed up with the kids. Mickey made his way over to Ian and Fiona, occasionally glancing over at Frank who was still stunned by the appearance of blood on his body. He had no idea what happened to him, but after the story Natalie told, he knew why Fiona looked so distressed.

“What’s going on?” Mickey asked nervously, taking in Fiona’s small form.

“Mickey, we have a problem,” Ian told him. “Fiona woke up thinking she killed someone and –“

“Please don’t tell me I killed someone,” Fiona panicked again. “Please. I can’t live the rest of my life knowing I did this to someone. I really need to know.” No response. “Please, Mickey. Tell me who I killed.”

Mickey’s heart rate picked up at Fiona’s voice. It cracked a couple of times as a layer of tears formed in her eyes. He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t let her know what she did to her own brother. She would have to live with that for the rest of her life, constantly feeling guilty for everything she has done. He didn’t want that for Fiona, not for anyone in the Gallagher family.

When Mickey still didn’t answer, Ian got up and walked over towards Mickey, placing his hands on his shoulders. “Mickey,” Ian spoke, starting to get a little worried. “You…” Ian’s heart was beating a bit faster now. “She didn’t really do this, did she?”

Ian was in so much denial; he loved his sister with all of his heart, and to know that someone’s life was taken away by her own two hands would change the ball game – not just for herself, but for the rest of the family.

Mickey turned his head from Ian to Fiona and back. A lot of pressure was being placed upon him because he seemed to be the only one who really knew what happened. He’s grown to like Fiona as a stepsister, and he didn’t want to lose that relationship with her, but at some point, she’s going to go back home and understand the true damage that has been done under the Gallagher roof.

Finally, Mickey took a deep breath, his breath hitching a couple of times, as he stared into Ian’s green eyes. “It’s Liam.” Ian’s eyes dilated, as expected. “She – Natalie told me what was going on, and – Fiona didn’t know she was fuckin’ doing it, and –“

Fiona rapidly shook her head in disbelief. “No, no, no, no, no,” she repeated. “Please, no. Not Liam.”

“She said that her cousin or – or, or some shit came in the house, and…” Mickey continued to stutter, tears blurring his vision. “There was fuckin’ blood everywhere, Ian. I –“

“No, no, no, no, no,” Fiona stuttered, looking between Ian and Mickey. “Oh, my God, no. It – this can’t be Liam’s blood. Please tell me this is all a fuckin’ dream! He’s alive, isn’t he? Please tell me I didn’t do this to Liam. Please.” Halfway through her response, her voice got a little higher than it normally would, and tears already fell down her face. She looked like she didn’t even want to touch herself at the thought of a dead Liam Gallagher in the old Gallagher house. The cops were probably over there by now, looking for anything to track down Fiona as they speak.

Both Ian and Mickey could feel tears fall down their cheeks at the sound of Fiona’s hysterical crying. Ian’s jaw had dropped. There weren’t any signs of Mickey holding a laugh or anything. This really happened. Liam was actually dead.

Ian couldn’t believe this was really true. Thanks to Natalie and Terry and their stupid scheme sparked by their own homophobia, Liam was now dead, and Fiona’s left beating herself up because of it.

Mickey turned away before Ian could say anything else, allowing Ian to rush over and hold onto Fiona very tightly. Mickey’s throat felt sore from the heaviness for Ian and his sister he was feeling. The feeling was just as intense as his mother’s death, and while he didn’t get much of an opportunity to bond with the youngest Gallagher brother, Mickey’s heart was extremely heavy for him and his older siblings.

Both Isaac and Max, still unaware of what was going on, glanced up at Mickey nervously. “Papa?” Isaac asked, looking between his devastated father and his aunt from steps away.

“What’s wrong with Auntie Fiona?” Max asked, concerned.

Mickey wasn’t ready to tell them. He knew they had to know eventually, but Isaac was only four, and Max only seven. They didn’t need the weight of the story of one of their uncles’ death on their shoulders.

Without uttering a single word, Mickey picked Isaac up off the floor, and he brought the two boys out of the building, leaving Ian to tend to Fiona and, shockingly, Frank as well.

* * *

About three weeks passed. Ever since Max took the drug that ceased his mind control powers, the number of murders have decreased, and there were no signs of anyone under mind control in sight. Ian and Mickey were relieved to have that problem settled, but for so many people, the tragedy seemed to be still among them.

Floyd had called the police on his cousins, Julius and Stan, and got them sentenced up to thirteen years in prison. As much as he wanted to stay out of the schemes and live a clean, normal life, he agreed to turn himself in, especially being that he was an accomplice to the murders of people around the world. Sometimes Ian and Mickey would call him to see if he was okay, but other than that, no one on the outside talked to him. He preferred it to be that way, though, considering that his parents now called him the _faggot savior_.

Liam’s funeral was held two weeks after his death due to financial situations, and a great amount of people showed up. Out of everyone there, Lip and Debbie had to be the most devastated for the loss of their brother. Aside from Fiona, Lip was the main one, out of all of the Gallaghers, who took care of Liam as if he was his own. Debbie also seemed to have a close-knit relationship with him. Liam had to be the best brother Debbie never even expected, and now he was gone.

Frank and Fiona both got sent to the Cook County Jail for involuntary manslaughter. Although Ian and Mickey told the judge numerous times that they were under mind control, the judge insisted that they didn’t have the intent to kill, yet put at least one person’s life at risk.

According to the court, involuntary manslaughter is a Class 3 felony; however, in Fiona’s case, since Liam is one of her family members, it is a special Class 2 felony, which meant she got more years added to her sentence. Since Frank’s victims weren’t family members, he ended up getting five years in prison, while Fiona ended up getting eight. Ian wanted to bail Fiona out so badly, but he and Mickey knew that they couldn’t afford two-hundred grand, especially since they have two children to take care of.

Meanwhile, more dilemmas came about even after the mind control debacle, and more people depended on Ian, Mickey, and the kids to help them. Ian was able to stop a train from riding off the tracks, Mickey rescued a family of three from getting murdered in their own home, and even Isaac prevented robbers from getting away with piles of cash. Max seemed to be the only normal one out of the Gallagher-Milkovich household, but regardless, the family was able to get so much done, and they felt grateful for the service they have provided for their city.

In the process of saving more lives, the family got more publicity from various news outlets, too, and people outside the city of Chicago eventually started calling them for help. The superhero work sometimes conflicted with Ian and Mickey’s regular jobs and Max and Isaac’s education, but the family came up with a system so they could do it all at the same time. Their system seemed to have worked perfectly, and while everything couldn’t be done at once, they did what they could to help others. Citizens continued to praise them for their hard work; some of them even asked for autographs like they were Hollywood actors or something.

The publicity didn’t matter to the family, though; protecting the people they cared about, as cliched as it sounds, was more important to them.

* * *

“Gallagher! You have a visitor!” A female guard stepped into Fiona’s cell and grabbed her attention. Fiona had been so sleep-deprived ever since she was sent here. After finding out what she did to Liam, she didn’t even want to show her face to anyone coming in to talk to her. However, she’d rather speak with her guest of the day than her bunk mate who constantly snores in her sleep.

So Fiona stood up off her bed and followed the guards through various hallways until they reached the visitation room. The moment Fiona stepped foot inside, she noticed her younger brother stand up near the back of the room, and she could already feel relief running through her brains. “Fiona,” Ian spoke.

“Ian,” she greeted breathlessly, rushing over to him and wrapping her arms around her little brother. Ian tightly embraced back, because he very well knew the rules of prison. Inmates and guests were only allowed to hug for a minute, and then they had to let go.

“How are you holding up?” Ian asked, sitting down in his seat. Fiona sat on the opposite side, hugging herself a little bit. That was the cue to Ian that she didn’t like it here one bit.

Fiona was quiet for a moment as she quickly observed the other inmates in the room. Ian followed her gazed and noticed a brunette at another table talking to a man with tattoos all over his arms and a T-Shirt with suggestive content on the front. “Not so good, I guess.” Ian answered for her.

“It’s a shit show in here,” Fiona complained, resting her elbows on the table. “I think three different women in here asked me to be their bitch, and one of them tried to hook their fingers into my pants pocket.”

Ian shrugged. “Sounds like a pretty weird speed date.”

Fiona scoffed. “Speed dating is better than this.” Ian didn’t realize how much he missed his sister’s jokes and her annoyance with other people until now, and she’s only been here for a couple of weeks. Not to mention the fact that Ian’s been separate from his family for a long time, ever since he and Mickey moved out and had kids.

The two siblings were quiet for the next minute or so. Fiona’s head hung low in guilt. Ian hated seeing her like this. Fiona was always the one keeping his family together. She was the same one who convinced everyone to donate a portion of money to the squirrel fund so they can pay for heat and electricity. She was the same one who convinced Lip to focus on himself and school. She was the same one who told Carl and Debbie to make the right decisions. She was the same one who changed Liam’s diapers and taught him how to walk. She was everything anyone could ask for in a mother and a big sister, everything anyone could ask for in a person in general.

After recent events, however, she doesn’t feel motivated or empowered to think that way anymore.

“What are you thinking about?” Ian asked carefully, taking in Fiona’s fallen facial expression. This time, Fiona lifted her head. Her eyes replicated those of an injured six-year-old on the side of the road without her mother or father to hold and heal her. She looked so broken, more than she’s ever been before.

“Ever since Lip found out about all of this…” she paused, her hands clutching fiercely against her skin, “he’s never come over here to visit me.” Ian stayed quiet as he noticed a layer of tears form in her eyes. “I, I think Debbie called a couple of times since I’ve been here, but she’s never physically came here for a visit, and Carl –“ She sniffled. “Carl doesn’t even know if he’s ready to come here or not.”

It was worse than Ian predicted. _Family always sticks together_ , people often said, yet not many family members came to the jail like Ian did to properly talk to her.

“Kev is too busy with the bar to make the drive down here, and – and he and Vee have to tend to the baby girls, but Vee still calls,” Fiona stuttered, finally releasing tears. “She calls.” Ian gulped at the sight of his distressed older sister. “You’re the only one who’s made the effort to come see me, Ian, after everything I’ve done to my family.” Fiona started to sob, hiding her face in her hands.

Ian felt a tear fall down his cheek. He never blamed Fiona one bit, especially after learning that the drug Max was given at birth was the reason people were acting violently towards each other. No one but Terry Milkovich, Natalie Douglas, and the portion of the Douglas family that contributed to this tragedy was at fault for this, yet people like Fiona are paying the price.

“It’s not your fault, Fiona,” Ian finally spoke after clearing his throat. “You didn’t do this to Liam and the rest of the Gallaghers, as much as you believe you did. Look at me.” Fiona wiped some tears off her face and glanced back in her brother’s direction. “You’re the best older sister anyone could ever ask for, okay? I – I get it, you fuck up sometimes, and it comes with serious consequences, but that’s not gonna make me stop loving you. You’ve done so much for us growing up that neither Frank nor Monica could have done, as much as it was their responsibility to do so.” Ian smiled, remembering the days when Fiona used to take him to baseball practice and cheer him on from the stands. “I honestly wouldn’t be here still, if it wasn’t for you.”

Fiona’s eyes were puffy now, and her cheeks were completely soaked. She was a mess. All of the Gallaghers were a mess. They were _their_ mess. To others, they were individuals who did terrible things; to them, they were just people struggling to make it through in this world.

A smile spread on Fiona’s face from hearing her brother’s speech. “Thank you so much, Ian,” she croaked, followed by another sniffle. “You guys are all my rocks, you know that?” Ian nodded. A pause followed, and Fiona let out a chuckle. “You know, we can at least thank Monica for bringing us into this fucked-up world, right?”

“Yeah,” Ian agreed, and this time, a happy tear fell down his face.

A shout from one of the guards interrupted everyone’s conversations, and people started to stand up and hug each other goodbye. Fiona didn’t want Ian to leave, and Ian didn’t want to leave Fiona. Either way, they still stood up and embraced each other once again. Fiona continued to sob on Ian’s shoulder, and Ian could even feel more tears leave his eyes himself.

“Please tell Mickey I’m very sorry,” Fiona cried, tightening her grip on Ian, “and tell the kids that I’m sorry for what I put them through and that I love them so, so much.”

Ian’s chin trembled, though he still agreed to Fiona’s request. “I will.”

They released each other seconds later, and Ian began to leave the room, not turning back for a second to see Fiona releasing another round of tears.

* * *

“Ay, you okay?” Mickey asked as Ian stepped into the room. Ian had wiped all of the tears off his face after seeing Fiona today, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t still upset.

Ian took his jacket off and hung it up on the rack before joining Mickey at the table. “Yeah,” he answered. “I just went to see Fiona today, that’s all.”

Mickey chuckled. “No Frank, I assume.” Ian didn’t answer, and Mickey started to get a little worried. “Something happen over there?”

Ian shook his head. “Fiona told me to tell you and the kids that she’s sorry,” Ian stated, staring down at his lap. “You know, for everything she…”

Mickey scooted closer to him and placed a kiss to his lips. “I’ve forgiven her already,” he stated, “and I’m pretty sure Max understands the situation, too.” He paused. “Isaac’s a little scarred after seeing all the blood, but that’s not new –“

“I still want to bail her out,” Ian spoke, mainly to himself. “I know we don’t have the money for it now, but I just…” He sighed. “I hated seeing Fiona all broken and shit like that, you know? Plus, she’s my sister. I know we take the boys to the old Gallagher place sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t miss her.”

Mickey understood how Ian felt. His sister Mandy hasn’t been jail for anything, but he’ll still go through lengths to help and protect her. That’s what Milkoviches do, after all, even if the lengths they go through turn out to be major sacrifices.

“Right now, we don’t have the money to do all that type of stuff,” he spoke, watching Ian deflate next to him. Mickey wrapped an arm around his shoulders and tightened his hold. “That doesn’t mean we still can’t help your sister out in there. We’re fuckin’ superheroes, after all.”

Ian was quiet for a moment before he chuckled. “What are we gonna do, have Isaac freeze one of the inmates to death for stabbing her with a fork?”

Mickey laughed. “It’s better than nothing, man. Come on.” He then started to reach for a magazine that had been sitting on the table for some time now, flipping through it until he got to page forty-nine. “Hey, check this out,” he spoke again, and Ian leaned on to see the article that had been published. “Remember that one day we got interviewed and shit?” Ian nodded. “They got the finished product. They even called us the South Side Supremes and shit.” The couple continued to read the article until Mickey’s eyebrows furrowed. “The fuck is a _Galager_?”

Ian laughed. “You’re a Gallagher, jackass.”

“No. I mean, they spelled your fuckin’ last name wrong,” Mickey clarified, pointing to a line near the bottom of the page for Ian to read. He scoffed. “Shit, who’s goddamn intern was typing this damn thing out, and who was the fuckin’ editor that didn’t read this shit over?” Ian started to laugh some more at Mickey’s anger. Mickey was hilarious when he was angry.

Out of nowhere, Max emerged from his room. “Dad!” he exclaimed. “Dad!”

“Son, what happened?” Ian asked, turning his head around.

“Dad, look. I have powers now. Look.” Mickey placed the magazine on the table and turned his body so he could see his son. Max took a giant rock from out of his pocket and placed it on the floor. “Watch this.”

Max took a couple of steps away from the rock on the ground to help demonstrate his abilities. Ian and Mickey didn’t notice anything at first, but the moment the rock started to lift up off the ground and up at eye level with the two men, they stared back at it in shock.

Maybe their eldest son was a little super after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have no idea how long I've waited to include that magazine bit into this last chapter, lmfao.
> 
> But this story is finally complete. I've had doubts on it before, but I am so glad that I was able to finish it. Thank you for those who have followed this story, and those who have left me prompts, I will definitely get to those as soon as I can. School will be starting up soon, and I still have other WIPs to work on (mainly Listen to My Heart atm), so I might start on some prompts later than others, but I'll definitely get to them.
> 
> Again, thank you all for reading. Any questions, concerns, prompts, etc. can be sent to my [Tumblr ask box](http://promqueen-and-hairgel.tumblr.com/ask), and happy reading. <3


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